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COLLECTIVISM 



AND 



INDUSTRIAL 
EVOLUTION 



BY 



Emile Vandervelde 



MEMBER OF THE BELGIAN 
CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 



TRANSLATED BY CHARLES h. KERR 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 

1906 






Coprricht, 1901, by 
Charlek n. Kerr A Com pa NT 

Transfer 
Engineers School UJ^y% 
June 29,1932 



, AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION 

111 writing this little book we have tried to fill an 
iiiuieniable vacuum in the socialist literature of the 
r rench language. 

Among the countless works to which socialism has; 
given birth since the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
tury" there are some— Marx's Capital is the most illus- 
trious example— which require from the reader a per- 
severance and a preparation which, unhappily, be- 
long only to a privileged few\ The rest of our books, 
on the contrary, when they are not out of date, or of 
too special a character, are primarily propaganda 
pamphlets which through their extreme simplicity 
are excellently adapted to reach the masses of the 
people, but which could hardly be recommended to 
those who seek a complete exposition of the collec- 
tivist theories. 

Often enough it has happened to us, when we were 
talking socialism with what our eighteenth century 
writers called "honest people," who had, or desired 
to have, "common sense" on all subjects, to meet 
with this question: "Will you please direct me to a 
good summary of your teachings?" 

An embarrassing question, at least when our neigh- 
bor reads nothing but French. 

The three volumes of Marx (only the first two of 
w^hich are translated) are not exactly popular works. 
Other books are no longer in the current of contem- 
porary facts, or treat only one or two aspects of the 
problem; the excellent tracts of the London Fabian 
Society are not published in French. Finally, des- 
pairing of the case, we resorted to advising those who 



6 author's preface. 

wishtHl to study surialisui in u siiiKlo volume to rood 
thr work of an adversary, the exposition, which in- 
deed is very objective, l>y Dr. Sehaetfle, "The Qulu- 
tesseiice of Socialism." 

It is to avoid this jilteruative that we have here 
tried to exphiin in as clear and concrete a form as wo 
could the main lines of the collectivist conception 
elaborated by Marx. En;:els, ('olins. Cesar de Taepe, 
and many others. 

Hut, can this exposition, written for the French 
rt'adin^r i)ublic and with the design we have just ex- 
plained, be of any interest to foreigners, especially 
to Americans? We should be tempted to reply in tlie 
negative if we were not firmly convinced of the ad- 
vantages which may accrue from a continuous and 
reciprocal penetration of ideas between the socialists 
of differi'nt countries and especially of th(^ Old and 
New World. 

At the hour when the I'nited States, finishing their 
industrial evolution, penetrating as victors into tlie 
markets of Europe, associating themselves with the 
capitalist crusade in the Orient, are mingling more 
and more in the concert of the powers of the old world, 
it is imperatively necessary that the socialists of 
Europe and America enter into a closer and closer 
compact, learn to know each otluT better and bettcT, 
and, in so far as diversity of environment can be recon- 
ciled with their common aspirations, unify their In- 
ternational propaganda against International exploi- 
tation. EMILE VANDEKVELDE. 



I 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Page. 
INTRODUGTION 9 

PART 1 15 

CAPITALIST CON'CENTRATION. 

CHAPTER I. The Decadence of Personal Property 2i 

1. The Peasant Proprietors 25 

2. The Artisans 33 

3. The Small Retailers. 41 

4. Summary and Conclusions 40 

CHAPTER II. The Progress of Capitalist Property 53 

1. Corporations 03 

2. Capitalist Monopolies 58 

I. Agreements 58 

II. Trusts 62 

CHAPTER III. Objecticns 69 

1. Workingmen's Savings 72 

2. Tlie Democratization of Capital 73 

3. The Numerical Increase of Small Enterprises 76 

I. Commercial Enterprises .- 77 

II. AgricultnTal Enterprises. '. 78 

III. Industrial Enterprises 79 

4. Summary and Conclusions 81 

PART II 85 

THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION 
AND EXCHANGE. 

CHAPTER I. The Three Elements of Profit 89 

1. Wages of Insurance 90 

2. Wages of Abstinence 92 

3. Wages of Superintendence 95 

4. Surplus-Value and Profit 99 



8 iAl;ll. (Jl LUNTI.MS — CONTINUKD. 

rape. 
CHAPTEi: 11. The Advantages of Social IToperty 1U3 

1. The Trofits <vf llie rublic Hiut'rijrises 104 

2. The Condition of Those Kniploye.! KKJ 

3. The rurchase of Raw Materials lO'J 

4. The Cost of Products and of Services Ill 

3. The Quality of the Products lir» 

0. The Interests of CfCncratlons to Come Ill) 

7. Summary and Conclusions lliO 

CHAPTER III. The Administration of Things 1T2 

1. The Proletarian Conquest of the Public Powers.. 124 

2. The Government State and the Industrial State.. ll't* 
?». The Decentralization of Social Enterprises VM 

4. The State of the Future :: ; 

CUAPTER IV. The Formulas of Distribution i;;7 

1. The Right to the Entire Product of One's Labor.. 14<.i 
'2. The Right to Existence 144 

0. Summary and Conclusions 147 

CHAPTER V. The Means of Realization lo2 

1. I'xpropriatlou without Indemnity loL' 

2. Expropriation with Indemnity ir.r. 

3. Expropriation with Partial Indemnity iri7 

4 Summary and Conclusions 10:> 

CHAPTER VI. Objections 173 

1. Socialism and Individual Initiative 17.". 

2. Socialism and Liberty Ib:^ 

3. Socialism and Art I'ji 



INTRODUCTION. 

That which is contains, I believe, the sum of that 
which was, of which it is the tomb, and the germ 
of that which shall be, of which it is the cradle.— 
Eufantin. 

The prodigious stroke of fortune which has mado 
civilization i)ossibie, as Ilodbertus somewhere says, 
consists in the fact that labor in common is more pro- 
ductive than isolated labor. 

Alone, man would scarcely produce enough to live 
on. 

Let him be incorporated^ on the contrary, into a 
social organization, and the productiveness of his 
work goes on ever increasing, in proportion as the 
division of labor, the convergence of efforts, the per- 
fecting of tools increase his power over things. 

In every society, then, vrhatever its structure, free 
or servile, capitalist or communal, social labor pro- 
duces an excess, a surplus-value, that is to say a value 
greater than the forces of labor and the means of 
labor consumed during the process of production. 

But while in a communal system this excess w^ould 
go to the profit of all, in capitalist society— character- 
ized by the divorce, more or less complete, betw^een 
property and labor— the surplus-value, produced by 
labor, does not return to labor. It is swallowed up, 
under the form of profit by the exclusive owners of 
the means of production and exchange. 

This Is stated by A. Menger, professor of law in the 
University of Vienna, in the following terms: 
' Our present patrimonial law, of which rroperty 



lO L\ J l<<n)L L riUN. 

funiis the central point. d(x\s not .L.iiaiaiiUH» lu liu- 
\vorkt»r the whole product of his labor. By abandon- 
in;^ to the free enjoyment of eertain i>ersous (by the 
ri;;ht of private property which it concedes them), 
the existing wealtli and notably t\w means of proihic- 
lion, our private law accords to these persons a power, 
thanks to which they may, without personal labor, 
assure themselves an income and use it for the satis- 
faction of their wants. This income, which the people 
favored by the juridical organization receive from 
society, without rendering a personal equivalent, is 
•designated by the disciples of St. Simon, of Buchcz 
and of Hodbertus under the name of rent; by Thomp- 
son and Marx under that of surplus- value (Mehr-werti: 
1 shall call it unearned income (arbeitloses Einkopi- 
-men).* 

Thus, thanks to the individual appropriation of capi- 
tal, tlie owners of the means of production and ex- 
change enjoy the hereditary right of dividing among 
themselves the surplus- value created by the labor of 
others. They can at their will consume it productive*- 
ly or unproductively, expend it in orgies or accumu- 
lati' it so as to increase so much the more the exploita- 
tion of labor. They as masters direct the workshops 
and factories, unless they prefer to appoint salaried 
directors in their places. And (Mther directly or 
through persons interposed by them, tht^y throw upon 
the national or international market articles of mer- 
chandise, exchange values, concerning tliemselves not 
with the public needs to be satistied, but with the pri- 
vate benefits to be realized. 

In short, the distinguishing feature of the present 
regime, as regards production and distribution, in 



•Lo droit an prodult lDtokrr.il (hi travail. French transla- 
tion, p. 1) (Paris. (;iar(l iS: Krit-ro. V.m)). See also, on the sntv 
J.'ct of tlu' Marxian tlHM)ry of 8urplus-valne. tlio Introauetlon 
l.y y\. Ch. Audhr to the sa'me work. pp. xxxiil. et seq. 



INTRODUCTION. il 

spite of the survivals of the past or the germs of the 
future that it ooiitalus, is the omnipotence of private 
capital, with no other aim than profit, with no ottier 
social rule than competition, with no other relief than 
the organization of the workers and the intervention 
—too often illusory— of the law. 

That wiiicli constitutes, on the contrary, the final 
end pursued by socialism, is the collective appropria- 
tion of the means of production and exchange, the 
social organization of labor, the re-division of the 
surplus-value among the workers, after the necessary 
deduction is made for the satisfaction of the general 
needs of society. 

Consequently under a regime of integral collectiv- 
ism—supposing, w^hat w^e do not assert in advance, 
that this regime wall one day be realized— the land, 
the mines, the industrial establishments, the instru- 
ments of credit, the means of circulation and trans- 
portation will belong to the collectivity; only objects 
of consumption will repiain personal property. 

The direction of affairs, instead of being as to-day 
monarchical or oligarchical, would take the republican 
form; instead of being turned over by right of birth or 
right of conquest to capitalists, competing or com- 
bined, it w^ould belong, not to the state, as is said 
and repeated abusively, but to autonomous public 
corporations under the control of the state. 

^Collective capital," says Schaelfle, "ought to be 
destined and appropriated, once for all, to the different 
local and professional groups and to their subdivi- 
sions, by special organs of the commonalty: adminis- 
trative authorities established by virtue of law, or 
popular leaders exercising a purely moral authority. 
These same organs would have to provide for the re- 
newal and the increase of the means of production. 
This direction and this economic administration would 



I?, INIKUDL'CTION. 

then be a iJiiblic and centralized alTair and not the 
work of eonipeting eapitalists."* 

Finally, ironi the point of view of distribution, the 
exrhange of merehandise for the sake of protits would 
^ivr way to the distribution of utilities, of use-values. 
lor ihe sake of satisfying social or individual needs. 
The pay of the workers, instead of beinjij determined 
by th(» cost of ijroduction of their labor power— the 
surplus-\ aiuc renialnin.i;- with the capitalists— would 
l)e propuriiuni'd either to their needs or to the value 
of the products of their labor. We shall have to ex- 
plain our position on this point in a later chapter. For 
the nuanent let us only say that the complete realiza- 
tion of (Collectivism implies not only (as some too brief 
delinitions mii^lit imi)ly) the collective appropriation 
of tae means of labor, but a complete revolution in 
the regime of production and distribution. 

r.ecause of its very fullness, this revolution cannot 
be other tlian the result of a long and complex series 
of partial variations: "profound transformations can 
never be sudden: suddiMi transformations can never 
be profound.'' 

Rut from now on.— for socialism is nothing else than 
tlie ideal projection as well ns the organic ^-ulmina- 
tion of present tendencies,— the social revolution is 
on its man h: the whole movement of capitalist pro- 
duction in the direction of the socialization of labor, 
is i)rep:iring and making inovital)h^ the socialization 
of prcjperty. 

It is i)rincii)ally at this point of view of production 
tliat we intend to place ourselves in this exposition.** 



»Sfli:u*ilh''.< "Quiiitc'sst'iicc »>f Stulalism," Knizlish translation 
piibilshc'cl by Swan. Stjuni-nschriu A: Co., London. Sue also 
**Le Cnllcciivisnic" In the Kcvuc Soc-iale vt PoUtuiue, 3r(i year 
(Hrussrls, ISV:U, p. 2*M. 

•♦of course' this point of view is i:i-eparal>le from the sul»- 
Htaiitial influence exercised upon the pro,luetlvity of social 
labor liy the progress realized in (list rilKii ion. I'l. W. Som 



INTRODUCTION. I3 

It would, in fact, matter little enough that our prin- 
ciples of distribution might be more equitable than 
the principles now admitted, if their application would 
necessarily bring a set-back, or even a check, in the 
expansion of productive forces. 

The fundamental proposition which stands out from 
the whole economic history of the world, is that a 
regime of production, no matter what acts of injus- 
tice it involves, what protests it excites, what revolts 
it provokes,— never disappears but to give way to a 
superior regime, superior not only in the point of view 
of abstract justice, but also and above all in the point 
of view of social productivity. 

Slavery and serfdom, condemned for centuries by 
moralists, were not suppressed in countries of Chris- 
tian civilization, until the moment came when the 
necessities of production required the formal emanci- 
pation of labor. 

Likewise, all the sentimental arguments that can 
be invoked in favor of socialism would not suffice to 
determine the real emancipation of labor, if collectiv- 
ism were not destined to prevail over the capitalist 
regime by reason of its superior productivity. 

It is this that we propose to show, by explaining the 
consequences of the concentration of capital, the re- 
sults of the increasing extension of the collective do- 
main, and the problems raised by the democratic or- 
ganization of social labor, as well as the division of 
its products. 



bart: Ideale der Sozialpolitik (Arctiiv fiier soziale Gesetzge- 
bung u. Statisiik. X. p. 45. F>erlin, 1897). V. also Solvay: 
Le productivisme social. (Annales de V Instltut des Science 
Sociales, Dec. 1898, pp. 415 et seq., Brussels, 11, rue Uaven- 
stein). 



PART I. 

CAPITALIST CONCENTRATION. 

New conditions of production, superior to the old, do 
not take their place until their material causes 
have developed within the old society.— Karl 
Marx. 

In proportion as societies progress, as the relations 
between men multiply, as communication becomes 
easier and more frequent, the division of labor goes 
on always increasing. ^ 

While in a rural community scarcely half a dozen 
separate trades can be found, the industrial census of 
the German Empire for 1895 shows the existence of 
10,397 professional callings, of which 5,506 are related 
to the manufacturing industries. 

And naturally, most of these trades are decompos- 
ing, in their turn, into fractional operations accom- 
plished by separate workers. 

Thus Levasseur, comparing the modern manufac- 
ture of shoes with the shoemaking of primitive times, 
reports that in the factories of Lynn, Massachusetts, 
fifty-two workmen and workwomen participate in the 
completion of a lady's boot, each of these processes 
lasting barely a few seconds and being repeated thou- 
sands of times a day.* 

But, precisely because of this infinite division and 
subdivision of social labor, the mutual dependence of 
the workers increases greatly. Farmers, merchants, 
factory workers, those who pass their w^hole lives 
sewing on the same buttons or piercing the, same but- 
tonholes,— all are bound more and more closely to 



♦Journal de la Soclete de Statistique de Paris, Jan., 1900. 



l6 COLLECTIVISM AND IXDUSTRL-VL EVOLUTION. 

other producers in proportion as their social function 
is more specialized. The processes of division of la- 
bor meet an instant response in the processes of tech- 
nical and of social co-ordination, which re-establish, 
on an enlarged base, the unity of trades and the soli- 
darity of the different branches of production. 

From the technical point of view, the modern fac- 
tory substitutes for the individual laborer a collective 
laborer, a gigantic automaton which accomplishes the 
complete sum of the productive operations; it is this 
very division of labor which begets socialization and 
makes it possible. 

From the social point of view, the organizations 
which have become too narrow to fit themselves to 
the progress of technique, will at no late day be re- 
placed by new organizations, adapted to the new 
forms of production. 

The isolated family economy, producing use values, 
consumed by the producers themselves, gives place 
to the economy of exchange, under its three successive 
aspects, urban, national and international.* 



I. ISOLATED FAMILY ECONOMY. 
When the division of labor is still rudimentary the 
economic unit is the family, in the broad sense of the 
word, namely, the commonalty, of all who live under 
the same roof, or, following the mediaeval expres- 
sion, "with the same spoon and the same pot.**" Such, 
for example, were the primitive Roman familia, the 
peasant community of the middle ages, and the zad- 
ruga of the southern Slavs. These domestic groups, 



•Somhai't. Die gewcrbliohe Arbeit und Hire Organization 
(Rnuiu's Arc'hiv filer soziale (iesrtzcebung und Statlsilk, 
Drlttes und viertes Heft, Herllu, 1>J.KM 

•♦A pood description of this state of things as It existed 
In England during the middle ages will be found in •'Econom- 
ics and Industrial Ilisfory, by H. W. Thurston; Ctilcago: 
Scott, Foresman & Co., lyyy. 



CAPITALIST CONCENTRATION. IJ 

whatever the number, often very large, of the per- 
sons composing them, present this common trait, of 
sufficing to themselves, except for a few products 
(iron, for example, and in inland countries, salt) of 
being side by side with similar units, but very feebly 
united or related to them: veritable social cells, scarce- 
ly connected with the outer world, they produce all 
that they consume and consume all that they pro- 
duce. 

It is scarcely needful to add that under such condi- 
tions the productivity of labor is reduced to the mini- 
mum. 



II. ECONOMY OF EXCHANGE. 
A. Urban Economy. 

At this stage of transition from domestic economy 
to the higher forms of social economy, production and 
consumption begin to differentiate themselves, the re- 
lations of exchange increase in number, industry sep- 
arates itself from agriculture, trade guilds spring up 
in the towns; the economic unit becomes the city, 
with the surrounding fields. 

"A map of the ancient German Enipire," says K. 
Buecher, "shows us about 3,000 towns scattered at 
an average distance apart of about four or five 
leagues in the south and west, and seven or eight 
leagues in the north and east. All were not of the 
same importance, but each was nevertheless the cen- 
ter of an economic territory as well defined as the 
ancient feudal farm, and which, limited to two or two 
and one-half miles square in the southwest, to three 
or four in the north, to five or eight in the east, al- 
ways enabled the peasant to reach the town market 
and return home in a day."* 



*See Favre. L'evolutlon economique dans I'histoire. Kevue 
d'Economie Politique, 1894) p. 16. 



l8 v.uj.i.i ^ i i\ i- I AND INDUS IKIAL F.VOI.UTION. 

Thus, then, l)y a slow transformalioii, which lasted 
throuj^h ooiituries and still continues in.(3iir days, the 
family conmuinity has in part lost its indopcndence. 

Nevertheless, durinj; the whole urban period, the 
ancient communal forms persist: most of the things 
ni'cessary to life are still produced hy the economic 
unit whicli consumes them; tlic division of labor re- 
mains little developed; comnierci'. national and inter- 
national, deals with only a small variety of goods: 
spices and southern fruits, for example, dried or salted 
fiesh, furs, tine cloths, and in northern countries, wine. 

Hut with the great discoveries beyond the sea, the 
markets extend, manufacture appears, the division 
of labor, which among the artisans of the middle ages 
had been merely into trades, now decomposes the va- 
rious processes which result in the tinished products. 
The municipal era, inferior in productivity, approaches 
its end, the capitalist era begins. 



B. National and International Economy. 

At the start, it is true, national economy, protec- 
tionist and mercantile, does nothing but reproduce 
(on a larger liase and preserving a large share of the 
earlier forms), the municipal organization. 

The industrial and commercial classes, moreover, 
do not yet represent, even in the most advanced coun- 
tries, more than a very feeble fraction of the total 
population. In England, for example, following the 
estimates of Gregory King for 1<»88, there were 
4.2C)r).0OO persons engaged in agricultural as against 
only L*!<i.(M)() in manufacturing and 24(),000 in trade. 
Hut in ITC'J. less than a century later, these propor- 
tions have already undergone radical moditicatious: 
according to Young the farming classes no longer rep 
resent more than 3,(X)0,(XHj inhabitants; manufactur- 



CAPITALIST CONCENTRATION. I9 

ing employs 3,000,000 and other occupations 1,900,000.* 

It is at thig moment tliat the industrial revolution 
is being accomplished with lightning rapidity. The 
world market is taking shape, the net-work of com- 
munication is developing; the earth gives up its min- 
erals, machine work is substituted for hand work; the 
factory industry prevails over all other modes of pro- 
duction, a veritable struggle for existence, a merciless 
combat on a limitless battle-field, ensues between 
the different forms of enterprise. 

The social consequences of this transformation are 
described by Karl Marx in the celebrated chapters 
which close the first volume of "Capital." 

The great capital of to-day, he says in substance,** 
takes its origin from the destruction of the small 
properties (of artisans and peasants), in which labor 
and private property were really associated, and in 
which the laborer was also the true proprietor of his 
means of production and of the product of his labor. 
This form, equitable in itself, of private property, in 
which the laborer was the free proprietor of the means 
of labor operated by him— the peasant, of the field 
that he plowed, the workman, of the tool w^hich he 
used ingeniously— this form, we say, excellent for its 
own time, conforming to justice and identifying itself 
with labor, had the great defect of scattering the 
means of production, and this dispersion resulted in 
an injury to the productiveness and the activity of 
labor. The small proprietorship was destined to 
perish through this defect, and what remains of It 
(small artisans and small peasant proprietors) is daily 
wasting away, forced as it is to yield to the power of 
large capital, agricultural and industrial. 

Private property, acquired by personal labor, and 



*J. A. Hobson, "The Evolution of Modem Capltiilism," p. 
22. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 
♦*Das Kapital, I. Chap, xxxii. 



20 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

based, so to spoak, on the union of the individual, In- 
dc^pendent and isolated, with the conditions of his 
particular work, has been supi)lant(Hl by capitalistic 
private property, based on the exploitation of the labor 
of others. 

As soon as this i)rocess of transformation, destroy- 
ing: the small properties of artisans and peasants, had 
sutticiently decomposed the old society; as soon as 
the former individual workers were converted into 
proletarians, that is to say, into workers separated 
from their means of production, and as these means 
(the former small propert}') were converted into great 
modern cai)ital, then the struggle of capital went 
farther; great capital, in its second phase of develop- 
ment, attacked the small capitalist himself. 

By the continued concentration of the means of pro- 
duction in the great industries, one aggregation of 
capital destroys many others; but meanwhile, in the 
domain of great private capital, there is developing 
e(iually and simultaneously, the co-operative form of 
labor on an ever increasing scale. This involves the 
application of science to technical processes, the ex- 
ploitation of the earth with method and system, th« 
transformation of private means of lal)or into means 
whicli can only be employed socially, and the inter- 
lacing of all nations into tlie network of the world- 
market. 

Along with the constantly diminishing number of 
tlie magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize 
all advantages of this process of transformation, 
grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degra- 
dation, exploitation; but with this too grows the re- 
volt of the working-class, a class always inc^reasing 
in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the 
very mechanism of the process of capitalist produc- 
tion itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter 
upon the mode of production which has grown and 



CAPITALIST CONCENTRATION. 21 

tloiirished along with it, and under it. Centralization 
of the means of production and socialization of labor 
at last reach a point Avhere they become incompatible 
"uTth their capitalist integument. This integument is 
burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private proper- 
ty sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. 

We have especially desired to reproduce almost en- 
tire this admirable page, so as to show how^ unjust it 
is to claim, as is sometimes done, that socialism, occu- 
pying itself wholly vrith the injustices of distribution, 
neglects to take account of the exigencies of produc- 
tion. 

The whole Marxian conception, on the contrary, is 
based on this fundamental idea, that the transforma- 
tion of personal property into capitalist property, and 
of capitalist property into social property, has for a 
determining factor the superior productivity of capi- 
talist production over small production, and of social- 
ism over capitalist production. 

If the autonomous producers, the master artisans, 
the peasant proprietors, in a word, all those who work 
for themselves, without dividing the fruit of their 
labor with any one, tend to disappear, it is, more than 
anything, because their energy in labor does not suf- 
fice to compensate for the advantages of socialized 
labor. 

If the number of enterprises is decreasing, at least 
in certain branches of industry, while the number of 
workmen employed goes on always Increasing, it is 
because great enterprises are as a rule more pro- 
ductive than small ones. 

Finally, if social property is destined to succeed one 
day to capitalist property, it is again because the sup- 
pression of private monopolies, of hereditary privi- 
leges, of unearned incomes, of the obstacles of every 
nature which capitalist appropriation opposes to the 
expansion of productive forces would increase In un- 



22 Lc>>LLLCri\lSM AND INDL'STRIAL LVULUTION. 

heard of proportions the productivity of social labor. 

Certainly we do not pretend that this schedule, 
whicli tries to embrace the whole evulution of modern 
pr()i)erty in a formula which is necessarily too simple, 
-pt4'sonal properly, capitalist property, social prop- 
erty, is adapted rigorously and absolutely to the star- 
tling complexity of the phenomena. 

AVe are the lirst to recognize that the athrmations 
of Marx on the increasing degradation of the prole- 
tariat express only a tendency which may be and 
uften is counterbalanced by other tendencies acting 
ill the contrary direction.* But the important thing 
to note— before explaining in more detail the process 
of capitalist concentration— is the organic character 
of the conception which serves as a basis for the 
colloctivist theories. 

That there are even in Marx, in the Communist 
Manifesto, for example, isolated passages which con- 
tain traces of the Utopian '^catastrophes" which the 
^Manifesto was expressly intended to combat, survi- 
vals more or less numerous of the theory of sudden 
strokes precipitating revolutions in modern societies 
"like a thief in the night," we do not in the least think 
of denying.** lUit it is none the less true that, in its 
entirety, the* ^larxian theory presents characteristics 
<liajnetrically opposite: the* expropriation of the means 
of i)ro(luction and exchange for the protit of the col- 
lectivity appears there as the linal term of the evolu- 
tion (.'f capitalism itself, as tlie consequence of the 
]irc\ions expropriation of the small producers by the 
large. 

It remains to know ^\hetlier it is true that in all thi* 
spheres of produdiiui and exchange, personal proper- 

•Kaulsk.v: Hcrnsti'lii iiml das SuzlaUlemokratlscbi* I'ro- 
graniin, pp. 114-1128 (StiUlK'art. IMHt). 

♦♦Set.' on this subject the scfond chapt.T of r.ornsteln. Die 
Vor.msst'tzun^'t'ii <l«'s Suzlallsinus uiid die Aufgabeu utT SO- 
zliildemokratlc (Stuttgart, ISUD). 



CAPITALIST CONCENTRATION. 23 

ty, the Instrument of labor of the autonomous pro- 
ducer, tends to disappear before capitalist property, 
the instrument of exploitation of the producer work- 
ing for wages. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE DECAI>i:X('i: OF rilUSONAL PKOrKKTY. 

"Das Ei^oiiluiu isl I'rciudtuin ^^'cwordrn."— Lassallo. 

T\w cliariu-teristic types of personal property, in- 
struments of labor for the proprietor, not instruments 
for the exploitation of labor, wliieli still persist in the 
present capitalistic societies, are: the peasant pro- 
prietor, the artisan, and, to the extent that he re- 
tains prupei'ty in his stock of gocjils, the small mer- 
chant. 

The peasant proprietor, utilizing directly Ills own 
labor, assisted liy the mend)ers of his family, repro- 
duces among us, more or less adapted to the modern 
environment, thi' isolated donjestic economy, the rural 
commonalty of the middle ages. 

The artisan, proprii'tor of his tools, and himself sell- 
ing what he produces, is a survival of the urban 
economy, of the trade guilds of the communal epoch. 

As for the little retailer, the middleman who multi- 
plies to-day in almost all branches of production, wc 
have setMi him appear oulj' since the moment when 
the progress of the division of labor and the extension 
of the markets has mad(^ way for his intervention in 
exchanges. 

It is since 1S.*U>, says I)(^grei'f,* that ri'tail trade and 

•W«* can approxhnately I'sllinale the trailiiijf p«>pulatluu or 
Belgiiini, diirhig the epochs uieiitiuiied below, by Itie success- 
ive ccusus rcixjrty as follows: 

Mt'Uibcrs ActlTe 

of trailing houses. traders. 

1840 liSi».013 lU3.t)'J« 

ibr.r, 3:r..in5 35o.m!3 

li>G«; 4(lO.OUO? 200.01U/ 

IfchO 51i3,UUa 244.1: 17 

ISDO TOO.eOO 327,0'JI 

It Is ai)parcnl that the animal increase Is no IcngiT 5 per 
cent, as durinK the two tirst i)crlods. luit only a little over 
3 per cent. -l)e (Ir»'ef. Le ("reillt CoUHucrclal et la Hauque 
Natiouale de llelghiuc, p. 2X',. (Hrus^els, Mayalez, l»yy.) 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 25 

wholesale trade have especially developed. The popu- 
lation active in trade arose in 184G to the number of 
10o,69G, a figure Avbicli by 1850 bad increased to 
156,803,— that is to say that tbe increase of the num- 
ber of middlemen during that period was more rapid 
than the growth of population; while the latter in- 
creased by less than 1 per cent a year, the number 
of merchants grew at the annual rate of about 5 per 
cent. 

We see then that the development of capitalism and 
Industrial concentration may have for a counterpart 
the multiplication of small enterprises In other 
branches, and notably in commercial pursuits. But 
we shall have to investigate in what proportion these 
little enterprises really constitute the personal proper- 
ty of those who operate them. 

I. — TtLe Peasant Proprietors. 

It is necessarily in agriculture, the least differen- 
tiated of the great industries, that we find oftenest 
the primitive forms of property and of production. 
Such are the "commons," belonging to the communes, 
but appropriated to the individual enjoyment of the 
inhabitants; the "latifundia," of feudal origin, the do- 
mains of the prince which have become domains of 
the state, and finally, that most perfect form of per- 
sonal appropriation, "peasant proprietorship," ex- 
ploited in direct production by the cultivator, aided by 
members of his family, and producing almost every- 
thing required for the needs of his household.* 

It is needless to say that in our countries where 
capitalistic production predominates, those conditions 
of life where they persist are already profoundly 
altered; to find them intact with their purely sexual 



♦For precise information regarding peasant proprietorsMp, 
see chapter I. of the book by A. Souchon, "La Froprlete 
Paysanne" (Paris, Larose, 1899). 



26 COLLECTIVISM AND iM)L>lKiAL LVuLLMON. 

divisioD of labor, it is lUH-essary to go to tho Slavic 
communities ol* eastern Kiirope. 

The Hukowinian peasant, says Karl Buecher, usu- 
ally etlicient l>y hinisi'lf, wlien he builds a house does 
the work of a carpenter, a roofer and other artisans, 
while his wife busies herself with weaving the parti- 
tions, plastering tlu'ni with clay and stopping the 
chinks with moss, with beating down the earth which 
is to serve them for a lloor, as well as many other 
labors of the same kind. From the sowing of textile 
plants or the care of sheep, up to the completion of his 
bedding or of his clothing, the peasant of Bukowina 
produces everything, even his dyes, which he extracts 
from the plants he cultivates, and his tools, naturally 
very primitive, which are necessary to him. And ia 
general it is the same with his food. Cultivating la- 
boriously his field of maize, he reduces, with the aid 
of a hand-mill, the grains into meal, which is his prin- 
cipal food; he constructs for himself the simple tools, 
dishes and utensils for his housekeeping, or at least 
there is in the village some self-taught mechanic who 
ran do it. He generally leaves to the Bohemians, 
w ho live scattered over the country, only the manu- 
faciuri' of iron.* 

In this stage of evolution, exchange, money, credit, 
capital, all the categories which bourgeois economy 
assumes to be eternal, reduce themselves to nothing,— 
or very near to it. 

But, beginning from the moment when labor is dl 
vided, or the acts of production are separated, one 
after tke other, from the domestic economy, to be 
transferred to social production, peasant proprietor- 
ship, where it is not actually suppressed as in certaiu 



♦K'ail HiKH'luT, Lt'S f»»rnu's (I'ludustiies dans line (level- 
<>l)iMUit'ni liisturique. (K»*vue d'Eeuuomie I'olltique, Ibi^'J) p, 
ti3U. 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 2? 

districts of England, by brutal and bloody confisca- 
tions,* none the less is radically transformed. 

The development of industry, in the cities, does 
away with domestic industry, the baking of bread, 
wood-working, the use of the spinning-wheel, hand 
weaving, for the needs of the family; or at least it 
specializes them and transforms them into those homo 
industries, miserably paid, which still vegetate in the 
lofty valleys of mountainous regions and in certain 
parts of the level country. 

The extension of cultivation, necessitated by the in- 
creasing demand for food products in proportion to 
the increase of urban and industrial population, car- 
ries with it the abolition of common pasturage and 
w^oodland, the sale or the division of "commons," and 
the consequent suppression of the customary rights 
so precious to peasant proprietors. 

"The communal heaths," said the deputies from the 
province of Luxembourg in the Belgian Chamber in 
1847, "are the most assured possessions of the poorer 
inhabitants. They make it possible for them to keep 
some heads of cattle on the common pasturage, fur- 
nish them with bedding for the cattle and thatching 
for their cottages, and moreover, in ^^rtain places a 
supply of firewood w^hich aids them in procuring the 
bread needed for the subsistence of their families." 

Deprived of their "commons"— except in certain re- 
gions w^here uncultivated fields are still numerous- 
obliged to have money, to buy w^hat the work of the 
home no longer produces, to pay the ever-increasing 
government charges, to pay the hired help w^hich re- 
places their sons, taken from the home by the factory 
or the army,— the peasant proprietors, reduced to the 
exclusive function of cultivators, are obliged to pro- 
duce exchange values, to keep their personal expenses 



♦Brentano, Erbrecht und Bauernstand in England. 2. 
(Gesammeite Aufsaetze I. Stuttgart, 1899.) 



"« CuLLKC'in 1> M AM. i.M'i.iKiw. KwjLLllON. 

Gown to tln' iiiiiiimuiii. to cat hii'd and oleomargarine 
from Amrrica while they sell llieir butter, their e;^'gs, 
their rattle, their i)ork, either at the market in th(» 
next village or to uierehants who too often exploit 
them and keep them in debt. 

Finally, when the development of international rela- 
tions, the perfecting of means of transport, the inva- 
sion of cereals and other products from beyond the 
sea, expose agriculture to all the fluctuations of the 
world market, the cultivators find themselves obliged 
to improve their tillage, to amend their technique, to 
transform their culture which no longer pays into a 
culture that is still prohtable. 

The aspect of the lields is being moditied. Wheat 
loses its ancient preponderance: it is giving place in 
large measure to market gardens, dairies and the rais- 
ing of fat cattle. l*asturage is being transformed into 
artiticial meadows. Fallow-land disappears. The soil 
is furrowed with drainage and irrigation ditches. 

Meanwhile, for industrialism and agriculture alike 
there is need of capital, and most of the peasant pro- 
prietors have none. So, many of them have been 
obliged to contract heavy burdens of lU'bt, to pledge 
their goods, or to give up laboring on their own ac- 
count and become tenant farmers. 

It is this which in great part explains the notable 
falling off of peasant proprietorship in P.elgium since 
the agricultural crisis, and esi)ecially in the interval 
between the census of 18^0 and that of ISlC). 

In ISSU, out of every hundred hectares (-47.1 acres i 
of land under ordinary culture, (U> were worked by 
tenants as against 34 by owners. In 18U5 the pro- 
portion by owners bad declined to 31 as against <;i>.* 

•lu GtTiuHL.y. out of 5,*J70.3-44 holdings, tlior.' are 15.7 per 
rent rented, t;3.0 per cent wurke<l by tlie owners, and 2k.i\ 
p»'r <'»iit nnled and i)aitiy worked tlin-ct. hut "The propor- 
tion of lauds rented out by contract to those worked by the 
proprietor himself seems to be actually lucreasiug."— (lilon- 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 29 

It is also important to note that direct working, 
peasant proprietorship, retains its importance only in 
the poorest regions, in the heaths of Campine, the 
higher marshes of Ardennes, the woodland cantons 
of the Entre Sambre and Meuse. On the contrary, 
capitalist proprietorship, cultivation by tenant farm- 
ers, prevails almost without exception in the richest 
regions, so that a conservative writer, M. de Lavalleo 
Poussin, could say: ''The development of peasant 
proprietorship proceeds in inverse ratio to the selling 
value of the ground. Where the land is high priced, 
tenantry is the dominant system; few proprietors 
cultivate their patrimony themselves and most of the 
peasants are tenant farmers. The reverse is the case 
where the land has little value, and the more that 
value declines the more does direct working tend to 
become the exclusive system."* 

Thus all the causes which tend to increase the value 
of land,— the increase of population, the growth of 
cities, the extension of industrial centers, the progress 
of intensive cultivation,— tend equally to cause a di- 
vorce between property and labor, to replace direct 
working and personal property by indirect w^orking 
and capitalist property. 

*'A necessary consequence of private property in 
land, under a system of capitalist production, is the 



del. Etudes sur les Population Kurales de TAllemag-ne. 
Paris: Larose, 1897.) In France, according to the Investi- 
gation of 1892, out of a total of 5,618,317 tioidings, there are 
4,190,725 worked directly and 1,437,522 indirectly. The gen- 
eral proportion of cultivation by owners to cultivation by 
tenants is in the ratio of three to one. In En;?land, according 
to Schaeffle, there are six times as many holdings worked by 
tenant farmers as by proprietors. (Kern und. Zeitfragen, p. 
193. Berlin, 1895. Thus the proportion of direct working is 
much larger In Germany and France, where the farmers still 
include half the population, than in England and Belgium, 
where the industrial and commercial populations form the 
great majority. 

*"La Propriete Paysanne" (Revue Soclale Catholique, Feb., 
1898; p. 100.) 



30 COLLIXTIVI^M AND INDL'STRIAL EVOLUTION. 

separation of the cultivator-propriutor into two per- 
sons, the proprietor and the farmer (entrei)reneur)."— 
Marx. Now, from tlie moment when this separation 
is produeed. the exploitation of the hiborer begins. 

It matters little, from this point of view, whether 
lar^'e or small farming predominates. In districts of 
capitalist agriculture, in the strict sense of the word, 
characterized hy the distinction between farm pro- 
prietors, farm operators and larm laborers, the ex- 
ploitation of labor is even, as a ireneral rule, less ex- 
cessive than in the districts of small farming, where 
the farmer is in reality nothing btit a piece-work la- 
borer, reduced to the lowest conditions of existence. 

It will suffice us to cite, on this point, the unques- 
tioned testimony of Paul Leroy Beaulieu: "The par- 
celing out of estates into very small farms, whether it 
be in countries with a dense poi)ulation like Flanders 
and the 'Terra de Lavoro' (land of labor i in the king- 
dom of Naples, or in a starving population like Ire- 
land, may be favorable to the proprietors, but it is 
not without social inconveniences, sometimes also eco- 
nomic disadvantages. The desperate competition of 
the small farmers forces up rents in normal times to 
very high figures; the proprietor, thus finding an (»asy 
income and one which in prosperous times tends to 
increase, stops cultivating land himself. In this par- 
ticular case, the high rents rest upon the distress and 
the low standard of living of the tenants. It is this 
that certain English writers have called '^competitive 
land-rents."* 

Supposing, then, as Sering forces himself to assert, 
in his critique of Kautsky's recent book,** that the 
progress of intensive cidture generally results in mul- 



•Loroy Beaullou: "Traito Tlieoriqiic Pt TrailqiH' (I'Koono- 
mie Politique," II.. p. 24. (Paris, (Juillaiimin, 1^'JG.j 

••Scrhi;!:: "Die A^rarfrage und dcr Sozlallsmiis," pp. o'J.'J, 
et seq. 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 3I 

tiplying the small and moderate holdings— a matter 
we shall discuss later— still would it not result that 
the exploitation of the agricultural laborers must be 
less intense and less unjTistifiable. And up to this 
point, the conclusion we have reached is the deca- 
dence, more or less rapid, more or less complete, of 
peasant proprietorship, wherever the capitalist system 
is developing. 

Again, even when they persist and where they 
escape being mortgaged, the family goods, robbed of 
their primitive characteristics, deprived of their 
autonomy, incorporated into the vast organism of pro- 
duction for exchange, are subjected to the sovereignty 
of grain merchants, millers, sugar manufacturers and 
other great barons of the agricultural industries. 

Moreover, in proportion as population increases, and 
especially in countries w^here inheritance is equal- 
when the '*zwei kindersystem" does not come in with 
its demoralizing consequences— the holdings, always 
more divided, always more impaired or encumbered 
by the claims of collateral heirs, become so slender 
that they no longer suffice to make a living for their 
proprietors. 

The reader may remember the imprecations of the 
old Clousier, the justice of the peace in Balzac's ''Cure 
de Village," against the title of succession of the civil 
code,— "that pestle whose perpetual motion distributes 
the land, individualizes fortunes by taking away their 
necessary stability, and which, always decomposing 
and never recomposing, will end by destroying 
France." It oontributes, at least, in a large measure, 
^o destroying peasant proprietorship, whether it be to 
:he profit of capitalist proprietorship or of ownership 
n petty parcels.* 



♦We should regard it as a remedy worse than the disease 
;o replace equality of shares by any system of inheritance 
¥hich should favor one of the children at the expense of the 



32 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

In the first case, the peasants are replaced by tenant 
farmers. 

In the second, they find themselves obliged to seek 
other means of livelihood, which are at first inci- 
dental, but eventually become their main depend- 
ence.* 

Some, and it is necessarily a small minority, start 
on some small commercial pursuit,— they become re- 
tailers, tavern-keepers, dealers in cows or poultry or 
manure. 

Others, uprooted from their native soil, abandon to 
their waives, or to their relatives the cultivation of 
their parcel of ground, and go abroad in the summer to 
work in the harvest field, or at gathering beet-roots, or 
at making bricks, or any such work, so when autumn 
comes they bring back a few hundred francs to live 
on through the winter. Others again, while they keep 
a patch of land, which they generally have prepared 
by the nearest farmer instead of working it with a 
spade as formerly, themselves become wage-workers, 
industrial or agricultural. 

In Belgium notably, thanks to the closeness of the 
centers of population and to the institution of "work- 
Ingmen's trains," which carry them at a rate ten times 
less than that for ordinary travelers, there are daily 
more than a hundred thousand country people, among 
whom are many petty proprietors or sons of proprie- 
tors, who go by rail to work in factories or coal mines, 



others, and wkich might consolidate the peasant proprietor- 
ship in favor of the privileged heir, but only by hastening the 
proletariazation of the heirs sacrificed. Further information 
on this subject is contained in the fine collection of essays 
by Brentano: Gesammelte Aufsaetze, Erbrechtspolltik. 
(Stuttgart, 1899.) 

♦According to the industrial census of the German Empire, 
June 14, 1895, out of each hundred agricultural holdings there 
are 40.35 which are occupied by people exercising as their 
main dopendence some nonagricultural profession. For 
further details see Rauehberg, Die Berufs-und Gerverb. 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 33 

and often at surprising distances from their homes.* 
Some time ago, for example, the writer was at 
Assche, a peaceful Flemish village northwest of Brus- 
sels, some forty miles from the coal region. Observ- 
ing among the peasants who had gathered in the pub- 
lic square, attracted by the socialists' shouts, some 
whose faces were scarred by powder-burns, so charac- 
teristic of miners, I aslied them whether they had for- 
merly worked in the "black country." ''We work 
there yet," they replied. "We go every morning from 
Assche to North Brussels, from North Brussels to 
South Brussels by the belt line, from South Brussels 
to Charleroy, and we return home every evening by 
the same route." 

According to information furnished by the depart- 
ment of railways, there are in the district of Brussels, 
and especially in East Flanders, thousands of work- 
ingmen who are in practically the same condition: 
ten hours at work, two hours of railroad travel going, 
two hours of railroad travel returning, and often a 
long walk besides. We may well ask with apprehen- 
sion what human element can remain in such lives, 
wholly absorbed in the struggle for bread. And yet 
in spite of all some of these very men, unconscious 
types of Prometheus, are carrying back to their homes 
the spark snatched from socialist altars and are kin- 
dling, even in the obscurest country places, the great 
flame of hope in a better future. 

II — Th.e Artisans. 

In branches of production apart from farming, han- 
dicraft industry, a dominant form of the economy of 
the middle ages, plays a secondary and diminishing 
part under the capitalist system. The artisan, pro- 
prietor of his means of production, working for the 



*Vandervelcle, "Les Villes Tentaculaires" (Revue d'Econo- 
mie Politique, April, 1899.) 



34 COLLFXTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

local market, himself selling to the consumer the 
products which he makes, is scarcely to he found any 
longer except in regions and in hranches of industry 
where some ohstacle exists to the extension of the 
market, to the development of the division of labor. 

This is the case notably Avith rural trades, with the 
industries of luxury, and with those whose products 
are perishable and find a limited local market. 

**As a general rule," says Du Maroussem, "it may be 
laid down that when the markets are coulined, lim- 
ited to the neighborhood, or to a very small class of 
the population (as in the case of bakeries and shops 
for turning out the most expensive furniture) small 
establishments remain in the majority; when, on the 
contrary, the markets increase and become national 
or international, the great factories and the domestic 
Industries divide the market between them; the latter 
I)ersist, as long as the hand of labor can struggle, by 
its cheapness, against the progress of mechanics. 

*'Conforming to these data, we can still find the 
small industry ♦ ♦ * in the food-producing groups, 
bakers, pastry-cooks, confectioners, butchers; in the 
groups of textile industries and cloth-making,-— the 
lace-makers, tailors, seamstresses, linen-drapers, 
dress-makers, etc.; in the leather industries — morocco- 
tanners, sheath-makers, pocket-book-makers, etc.: in 
the wood-working industry— almost the whole group' 
of cabinet-making, fancj' turning, etc.; in a portion of 
metal-working, as in the precious metals."* 

But in these very branches of production, personal 
property in the means of labor, the autonomy of the 
producers, the individualist organization of the fac- 
tory, and oftener still of the enterprise, are tending to 
disapi)ear. Sominimes it is large-scale production 
Avhich encroaches; the factory whirli competes victo- 



•Ln pptito indiistrlc. T. 1. L'Allmontatlon a I'arlF, p. y. 
Paris. 1M>3. 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 35 

rioiisly with the artisan, as the organized bakery sup- 
plants the baker and the furniture factory replaces or 
drives out the cabinet-maker.* 

Sometimes by a very frequent form of the transition 
to the factory system, the old processes maintain 
themselves by the side of or to the exclusion of the 
new processes. Hand labor persists; the small em- 
ployer keeps his workshop, alone, or with his family, 
or with one or two assistants; but because of the ex- 
tension of the market, an intermediary slips in be- 
tween the producer and the consumer; the artisan's 
industry is transformed into a home industry tributary 
to a "collective factory."** 

From the technical point of view, nothing, or scarce- 
ly anything, is changed. From the social point of 
view, there is a complete revolution. In place of in- 
dependent producers, working for their own account, 
disposing of the entire product of their labor, we find 
ourselves in the presence of proletarians, working for 
'the account of a proprietor— a warehouse-keeper— who 
centralizes the trade in their products, and furnishes 
them, oftener than not, with models and materials, 
sometimes even with the utensils, whether tools or 
machines, which they use. And in our days this re- 
lentless evolution of the industry of the artisan has 
taken on so general a character that our time has been 
called "the century of the factory." 

It should, of course, be understood that not all home 
workers are former employers who have fallen into 

♦Revue de Travail, Dec, 1899, p. 1293. Solgnles: "Tne 
provincial cabinet-maker complains loudly of the increase of 
factory competition, seeing that the furniture factories are 
becoming more numerous and their machinery more perfect. 

♦*Leplay defines a "collective factory" as tlie organization 
of industry on a large scale, where the employer centralizes 
the trade in products which a .working-class population 
manufactures, for the account of this employer, in separate 
shops or in their homes. 



36 COLLLCl IV1>.M AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

tlio proletariat. SclnviodlaiKl, in his numerous studios 
on the "colU'ctive lactory," shows very plainly that] 
the honu* industrhs ean arise spontaneously, din^etly, I 
without havint: passed through any other form, orj 
can be derived, not only ironi the industry of the! 
craftsman, but from all the previous forms of iudus- J 
trial production. 

The absorption of independent craftsmen is, he 
soys, jTGnerally the principal way in which "collective 
factories" are formed in crowded cities. But the ab- 
sc»rption or transformation of the craftsman is not 
confined to the cities, any more than the successive 
development of home industry is conlined to the trans- 
formation of the craftsman. All the forms of in- 
dustrial production have undergone this transforma- 
tion into collective industry. In the villages, in the 
hamlets, in the farms of the peasants, we see domestic 
labor merging into collective manufacturing. It is 
the same with wage labor, which ecjually had at one 
time a prime importance as a mode of production, and 
even the most modern system of exploitation, the fac- 
tory, is being transformed, according to the best think- 
ers, into the collective factory."* 

The examples of this last category, which mark a 
step backward, a retrogression to lower forms, are at 
least doubtful and certainly exceptional.** It hap- 
pens often, on the contrary, that the collective factory 
finds its origin in the capitalist transformation of 
home labor or day labor. That is the case, for ex- 
ample, with straw-plaiting in Tuscany and the Valley 
of the Geer, and with toy-making in Oberlaud von 
Meiningen, lace-makinj.'- in ITanders, the making of 



•Schwlrdland: "La roprosslon dii travail en cliamhrc." 
(Rt'vuc (rLctinoniio I'olitiqiu'. 3J>'JT). p. 5M). 

**i>op, for oxamplo. Kf>vaIowsky: "La roglme economlque 
de la Russie," pp. 173 el scmi. (Paris, Glrard et Brlerc, lb\)b.) 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 37 

wooden shoes in Waes, almost everywhere, the weav- 
ing- of thread or of wool. 

Thus, bj' the side of the "master-workman,'' the 
cutters of Nauner, the furniture-workers of Paris, the 
canuts of La Croix Rousse, weaving wonderful silks 
on their dusty looms, the subordinate employers,— 
tailors, shoe-makers, weavers, cigar-makers, who still 
work in their own shops, but for the account of a capi- 
talist; we find a multitude of artisans, who work in 
their own rooms or at home, who have been enlisted 
directly by the manager of the enterprise, or at least 
have never passed through the craftsman stage. 

Moreover, whatever may be the beginnings of home 
industry, what always characterizes it is the depend- 
ence of the workers, for the marketing of their prod- 
uct,— a dependence which usually involves the eco- 
nomic prosperity of the entrepreneur, and the poverty, 
or if they have anything to lose, the ruin, of the pro- 
ducers w^hom he keeps busy. 

Permanent depression of wages, enforced idleness 
through the dead seasons (the seasons when people 
die),— feverish work through the rush seasons,— such 
is almost always, and especially since the machine 
has played its part, the unhappy lot of the home 
worker. 

He is still the master of his own time, one may say, 
with no regulations to interfere with him; no overseer 
to watch him. But what matters the absence of an 
overseer to those who have hunger for a prison-guard, 
or the absence of rules to those who w^ork without re- 
spite, days and nights alike?* 

♦Bureau of Labor: The clothing industry in Paris, 1896, 
p. 501: "Before the law of Nov. 2, 1892, on the labor of 
women and children * * * the ten-hour day very often 
marked the dull season and the day of twelve and a half 
hours the rush season. Sometimes even, owing to the urgent 
demands of customers, the indifference of employers and the 
partiality of forewomen, one might point to a record of 44 
hours in three days (12 hours, 20 hours, 12 hours). The time- 



38 CULLIXTIVI^M AND INDUSTRIAL hVULUTlON. 

lu his picture, "Summer Days," the artist Steinleln 
shows us a seamstress in her room, putting out her 
himp wiieu the tirst rays of dawn enter her garret, 
and greeting tlie splendor of the morning sky with 
these bitter words: **At last the season has come 
when I can save three hours of kerosene a day." 
Would it not be far better for her to work in a factory, 
contined at painful tasks, but protected to some ex- 
tent by the factory lawsV 

Nowhere, perhaps, except at the homes of the peas- 
ants who work for some commercial house, are wages 
so low, wurk-days so long, capitalist exploitation so 
shameless, as in these "family work-shops" of the 
great cities, which in our official statistics count as so 
many distinct and independent enterprises. We need 
only call to mind the hon'ors of the "sweating system" 
in the East End of London, in the sweat shops of New 
York,— those innumerable holes where whole families, 
living in promiscuity and tilth, work to the limit of 
fatigue in a poisonous atmosphere.* For let us not 



boc>ks, comprising the dally th'talls of ei^bt years' work, en- 
altle us to get at the maxiimun of several well-known i-siaU- 
lishuieuts. There are oecasiunal days of sixtt-^u hours, l»ut 
the highest weekly record appears to be 77 hours. As to the 
"second shift," the shift which certain workers can lupose 
on themselves at their own homes, these time-books make no 
mention. That is an unspeakably sad feature of "liome 
work." 

♦On the conditions of labor in home Industry, see especially: 

England.— First report from the Select Committee of the 
House of Lords on the sweating system (1888).— 1>. F. Schloss. 
The sweating system \h the Lnlted Kingdom. (Journal ol 
Social Science, October, 181)2.) 

Germany.— Weber. Das sweating sj'stem In der Konfectlon 
uud die Vorschlaege der Kommisslon fucr Arbelterstatisiik. 
(Archlv fuer soziale Gesetzgebun.ir. X. Viertes Heft, lierlin, 
1S!>7.)— Tlmm. Nt'uere Fntersuchungen ueber die T.age der 
ibMitschen Konfektlons-arbelter. (Neue Zeit, 5 November, 
18U8.) 

Austria.— Schwledland. Klcingewerbc und Hausindustrle In 
Oesterrelch. Leipzig, 18m.— Bauer. l>le Heimarbelt uud Ihre 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 39 

forget,— and this consideration naay appeal to the 
philanthropists who admire domestic labor,— these 
homes of misery for the producers are also homes of 
infection for the consumers. 

'*It is certainly," says the hygienist, Tanquet, 
"through the medium of manufactured articles that 
the most constant relations are established between 
the different classes of society, and in view of the 
danger of infection, we should not congratulate our- 
selves that this system of work permits the father or 
mother of a family to watch by the bedside of a sick 
child and still keep at w^ork. The isolation of these 
diseases becomes impossible; at the homes of these 
poor people the partly finished clothing is gladly used 
to take the place of needed bed-coverings, and thus 
is especially suited to receive and preserve the germs 
of contagious diseases."* 

No doubt it w^ould be blackening a picture already 
dark enough if we were to attribute these dangers, 
abuses and sad results to all forms of home work. The 
glove-worker, for example, protected by a rigid union 
organization like that of the old-time guilds, does not 
experience, as yet, the distress of the shoe-makers 



geplante Regelung in Oesterreich. (Arcliiv fuer sozlale Gesetz- 
gebung und Statistik. X. Zweites Heft, 1897.) 

United States.— H. White. Tiie sweating system. (Bulletin 
of the department of labor, May, 1896.) 

France.— Office du Travail. Kapp. Vu Maroussem. L.a 
petite Industrie, Volumes I. and 11. (Paris, imprimerie na- 
tionale, 1893 et 1896.) 

Belgium.— Office du Travail. Les industries a domicile en 
Belgique, and especially the excellent monographics of Genart 
(I'industrie couteliere de. Gembioux) and Ansiaux (i'industrie 
armuriere liegeoise et I'industrie du tressage de la paille dans 
la vallee du Geer.) 

Switzerland.— Swaine. Die Arbeits-und Wirtschaftsver- 
haeltnisse der Elnzelsticker in der Nordostschweiz und Vorari- 
berg. Strassburg. Truebner, 1895. 

♦Schwiedland. Travail en chambre et police sanitaire. 
(Revue d' Economic politique, 1900, p. 230.) 



40 ( 1)1 LlA 11V1>.M AM) INM^IKIAL EVOLUTION. 

ami tli<* tailors.* iUil it is iiunt' the less true that 
ill most eases home workers an* worse treated than 
laetory workers; and what we have just said of work 
in the cities ai)i)lies etiually, and sometimes with an 
aj^gravation oT wreteliedness, to lu^me work in the 
country. 

"It is there," said a Liberal deputy in the parlia- 
ment at Vienna, "it is there that pauperism increases 
far beyond its imrcast* amon;: the small industries of 
the cities; it is tlierc that the workday reaches eigh- 
teen hoiu's, without bringinj; the workers anything 
more than potatoes; it is there that anaemia and 
I)la>rues sweep o\er whole valleys."** 

If then the collective factory, or, rather, collective 
manufacture, succeeds in maintaining itself, if in 
si)ite of its lower technical ethciency it resists the for- 
midable competition of the centralized factory, it is 
at the cost of the deep degradation and demoralization 
of the workers it employs. We shoidd therefore de- 
sire, and even favor by legislative means,*** the trans- 
formation of these degenerate forms of individual 
I^roduetion into the highest forms of social produc- 
tion. 

Those inclined to optimism may hope that this 
transformation will be the work of co-operative socie- 
ties, grouping the home workers and linally acquiring 
surticient machinery to compete successful!}' against 
capitalist industry. Hut in tlie cases which are unhap- 
pily of such inhnite number where such a hope seems 



♦Ontheorganizationof tlu' "UnltiMl (llove-wurker.^" in lirus- 
^(-\ii, see E. Vaudervt'ltU'. lOnqiU'ti' siir U'S Associatiijns i>r»»- 
f»^^sioIll'lU^s d'artisaus I't d'ouviitTs on lU*lpi<iiie, \ oi. 1., pp. 
50 aud full. (Brussels, Ollicf de publicili'. IblU.) 

•♦Schwicdlaud. La repression du travail en chambri'. (iU^ 
vue d'Ecuuomit* pollliiiuo, lSi>7, p. 5^0.) 

•♦♦For inf(»rniati«>n conccinlnK It'pishi tlve iiUMSures projjo.^ed 
for the supprcssiun (»f the lionif Industry, see alsu ""Zlele uud 
WeK'e elnrr Helnj.irbeitgeset zgebuug" (Wieu, Mantz. isiU'i. by 
the same author. 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 4I 

altogether chimerical, it should still be regarded as a 
real advance, technical and social, if the exploitation 
of home workers by the capital of the merchant can 
be replaced by the exploitation of laborers in the 
workshop or factory by industrial capital. 

III.-Tlie Small Retailers. 

In spite of the growth of the department stores, 
which Zola describes in so masterly a fashion in "Le 
Bonheur des Dames," in spite of their disastrous en- 
croachment on the surrounding shops, the number 
of the small retailers, of all kinds, far from declining, 
seems, according to recent census reports, to be con- 
stantly increasing. 

At the last meeting of the Verein fuer Sozial Politik 
(Breslau, 1899), W. Sombart stated (and supported his 
position by figures) that their number is increasing 
more rapidly than the population.* For one that dis- 
appears, ruined by the capitalist bazars, ten appear In 
other branches of trade on other places, in the coun- 
try, or in the suburbs of large cities. They are ordi- 
narily old servants or workingmen who have saved up 
something, or else artisans whose situations have be- 
come intoleiable, and In the villages farmers who 
have wholly or partly given up farming. 

To these must be added a great number of clerks 
and salesmen who, finding themselves out of a situa- 
tion, or desiring to marry, establish themselves on 
their own account, often with manifestly insufficient 
resources. The possibility of supplying themselves 
too easily. In consequence of competition, with mer- 
chandise on credit, leads to the invasion of certain 



♦The census of professionals in the German empire for IHS'2 
gives 1,364 merchants for 100,000 inhabitants; that of 1895 
gives 1,502. In many towns the proportion has nearly doubled 
since 1870. On the numerical increase of commercial exploita- 
tion see Bernstein, Die Voranssetzungen des Sozialismus, pp. 
60 and foil.— Berner. Die Konzentrirung der Betriebe in 
Oesterreich (Neue Zeit, July 22, 1899), p. 518. 



42 Ci)LLKCl'l\ I-.M AND INlJ LSTK 1.. .. i.-.i,. ilw.N. 

l»rainlu's (iT iradi* hy t'stablishmi-nis with nothing 
sulid aliiMit tln'iii. which appear especially in times of 
(leprrssioii like iiiuslirouuis after a rain, only to dis- 
appear in tilt' ( oiiise ot* a year or two when inevitable 
ruin overtal^es tlieni.* 

In sliort, small trade is the special refuge of the 
eripi)les of capitalism, of all who prefer, in place of 
the hard lahor of prcnluction, the scanty gleaning of 
tlie midiUeman. or n\ ho, no longer linding a sutlicient 
rcNcnue in industry or farming, desire to add a string 
lo their how l»y oixiiin;^' a little shop. This is in par- 
ticular what explains the multiplication of saloons and 
taverns of all sorts— the easiest and least costly enter- 
prise to start— in all the communes. 

But it woidd be a serious mistake to suppose that 
these miniature establishments, which the census otli- 
cials characterize as distinct enterprises, can be gen- 
erally regarded as the personal property of those who 
carry them on. A great number of them, and a num- 
licr constantly increasing, as capitalism develops, have 
only a phantom of indei)endence, and are really in 
tlie hands of a few great money-lenders, manufactur- 
ers or merchants. 

With rare t^\cei)tions. almost all the important brew- 
eries, with a view to extending their market, own a 
grt'ater or less numl)er of saloons; and as experience 
(piickly showed that to make these saloons prosper, 
the sale of gin was much more advantageous than 
that of l)eer, a number of brewers have made them- 
selves wholesale dealers in li(iiior. 

It is this which i'Xplains the fact, apparently para- 
doxical, that rec(Mitly. at Bruges, the brewers ener- 
getically demanded the abolition of the licei^e fee 
iniMitsed only upon the retailers of distilled liquors, 



*\V. Horgrshis. WandluuKen im luothTiU'ii Detailliandel. 
(Hraun's Archlv fuer snzlalf CJesi'tzgebuiig, Ife'Jh, tirst l)Ook, 
p. CD.) 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 43 

whereas they seem at first sight to have every motive 
for supporting measures v^'hich tend to restrain the 
consumption of gin and consequently to increase the 
consumption of beer. The contrast between the real 
situation and the apparent situation which exists for 
the liquor trade, considered with reference to the de- 
gree of capitalist concentration, is found likewise in 
many other branches of retail trade. 

In the cities of Holland, for example, most of the 
bakeries are only depots supplied by the capitalist 
factories. At London, Macrosty, in an article in the 
Contemporary Keview, March, 1899, shows that the 
cheap restaurants are found to be in the hands of 
four or five firms. The milk trade is in the same con- 
dition. The drug and the cigar business are under- 
going the same fate; a single company owns a hun- 
dred cigar stores.* 

To sum up, then, the countless business enterprises 
which figure in the census reports can be grasped in 
three classes: 

1. Those which, while they count as statistical 
units, are nothing but agencies,— branches of large 
capitalist or co-operative enterprises. 

2. Those vviiich furnish the manager only a supple- 
mental income, helping out his wages. 

3. Finally, those which really constitute independ- 
ent enterprises, of which the stock in trade belongs to 
the little retailer. 

Now if the total number of commercial establish- 
ments is certainly increasing, it is much less certain 
that the profits of this last class, the only one which 
interests us from the point of view of the union of 
property and labor, are tending to multiply. 

True, their number is increasing, with the speciali- 
zation of trades, in fields wiiere the economy of ex- 



♦Kautsky. Bernstein und das sozialdemokratisctie i'ro- 
gramm, p. 65. 



44 CuLLl.Cin 1>-M AM) INDUSTRIAL KVOLUTION. 

(•h;ni;:('s is (1«'\ ('l()i)in^^ jit tlu' cxpi'iise of the domestic 
liniiis <»r production. A village, once purely agricul- 
tural, wiinsc inhabitants haked their own bread and 
traded their butter and eggs for merchandise at the 
store iu the next village, now possesses its bakery, its 
grocery, or at the very least, one of those miscella- 
neous stores where they sell yardsticks and colonial 
goods, saucepans and almanacs, blacking and red 
herrings, corsets and straw hats. But if, in rural 
neighborhoods, comm(^rcial concentration operates to 
increase the number oT shops; iu the cities, on the 
contrary, the development of the co-operatives and 
(♦specially of the department stores, some of which, 
like the Bon Marehe or the Louvre, employ several 
thoiisand people, inflicts upon the small retailers a 
damage which is measured tirst by the reduction of 
their profits and later in some branches of trade by a 
reduction in their numbers. 

Nevertheless, there is no doubt, and it is one of the 
most serious defects of the i)resent system, that the 
small retailers retain a numerical importance out of 
all proportion to the services that they render the 
community. Many striking examples have been given 
of what the parasitism of middlemen costs the pub- 
lic, from the Normandy apple, selling at Paris for 
sixty times what it costs where it is grown.* to the 
litre of wine from the south, which brings fifteen cen- 
times to the owner of the vines and is sold for seventy 
or eighty centimes at the wine-shop. (This is about 
fourteen cents a (juart. By the time the same wine 
reaches America, the re tail price is a dollar a quart.— 
Translator.) Again. A\-e Itaru Ironi the Economiste 
Francais that the average^ price for lifty kilograms of 
cofifee, which reached 1(>::5 francs in IJSUo. had fallen to 
'^\) francs in IStJi); now, this reduction of two-thirds 

•Glilc, La c'o-operatloii, p. L's4. (P.iris. Lantsc. I'JUU.) 



» 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 45 

lias had no effect on the retail price; only the middlo- 
Uien have profited by it. Brazilian coffee, which does 
not cost in France, all charges paid, more than 2^ 
francs per kilogram (25 cents per pound) is currently 
retailed at 4 to 5 francs, while its purity is not always 
absolute. Those who profit by trading in this article 
tax it more heavily than does the custom house.* 

Moreover, in spite of these profits, so burdensome 
to their customers, the small retailers are so numer- 
ous that, especially in the branches invaded by large- 
scale business, there are thousands on the verge of 
bankruptcy. It has been well remarked by Charles 
Gide that if every baker baked but one sack of flour 
a day and if on that sack he had to live and pay his 
rent, his taxes and his helpers, he w^ould have to raise 
the price of every loaf and still he would live most 
cheaply. All this proves that our machinery for dis- 
tribution is detestable and justifies the severe con- 
demnation pronounced years ago by the Utopian so- 
cialists against the useless multitude of petty re- 
tailers. 

''Commerce," said Considerane, "is useful only to 
serve the needs of production and consumption; it 
should be the servant of the other two branches. * 
* ♦ Its role is subordinate. Unproductive in its na- 
ture, it adds nothing either in quantity or quality to 
the objects w^hich pass through its hands; its opera- 
tions ought to be conducted with the smallest possible 
number of agents. Now this is realizable only by 
means of an administration which puts the producer 
directly in touch with the consumer and suppresses 
all the intermediate robbers and parasites." 



♦For the existing relations between wholesale prices and 
retail prices see Newman's "Wholesale and Retail Prices," 
in the Economic Journal for September, 1897. 



46 COLLEiTIVISM AND INIH'STRIAL KV(3LUT10N. 

IV.- Summary and Conclusion. 

In spitr nf tlio growiii;: prciloininancM' of tho capi- 
talist or^'anization, wo still tiiul, in existing socioties, 
nnnirrous and important survivals of former social 
organisms, of ante-capitalist forms of production. 

Trasant proprietorship, the industry of the artisan 
and thr litth' indc^pendent business arc not on the 
eve of disapix'aring and wherever they survive, real- 
izing the union of property and labor, socialism has 
no thought of using compulsion to socialize them.* 

But however numerous the relics of ancient epochs 
may Ite in certain .countries, certain regions or certain 
l)ranclies of industry, it is none the less true that as a 
general rule the development of capitalism tends to 
(diminate the independent producers, to take away 
tlKMr capital, or, at least, to take away their former 
independence. 

I'roni the moment when the market reaches out to a 
sudicient extent, the advantages of the master's eye. 
of manual skill, of zeal for work stimulated by the 
direct and personal interest of the producer, no longer 
suttices to compensate for the superior productive ad- 
vantages of the division of labor, of the exact knowl- 
edge of the outlets for the product, and of the use of a 
more abundant capital. Still more is it so in those 
branches of production, always growing in number, 
in which technical progress has prepared the way for 
the reign of the* machine. 



•Cf. Kaulsky: "Das ICrfutor Pro^'ranmi, pp. 150 ot scq., 
(Sluiigart, 1M»1'.) FiLMlt-rich Kngels: "Die r.iuuTiifrape in 
Fraiikrolcb un.l I NMitschlaiur' (Nimip Zcit. IbtM-lJSDr). Nc lOi. 
"It i.^ cvldont that if the pnl)li<' powers cauie Into our hands 
we should not think of expropriating forcibly the little peas- 
ants (witli or without eoniiun^ailon) as we should be obliged 
to do with the large i>rei.rietors. Our opinion. In what con- 
cerns the little pe.isant, is that he should be Induced to 
transfer his enterprise and his private property to co-opera- 
tive associations, not by forre, but by the influence of exam- 
ple and with the aid of the public authorities." 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 47 

Xotliiiig is more striking in this regard than the 
valuable American investigation of 1898 on the com- 
parative productivity of hand and machine labor.* 
These researches, truly admirable for their precision, 
have borne on 672 kinds of products, industrial or 
agricultural. Each kind is minutely analyzed in Car- 
roll D. Wright's report, from the quadruple point of 
view of the number of workers, number of operations, 
hours of labor and dollars paid for labor, necessary 
to produce the same product, first, by hand; secgnd, 
by machine. 

Let us limit ourselves to quoting a few t^^pical ex- 
amples which show in a striking manner the over- 
whelming superiority of the machine: 

1. Making of ten carts. 

By hand: 2 workmen performing 11 distinct opera- 
tions and working in ail 1,180 hours, paid $54.46. 

By machine: 52 workmen, making 97 operations 
and working in all 37 hours 28 minutes, paid .$7.90. 

2. Making of 500 pounds of butter: 

By hand: 3 workmen, 7 operations, 125 hours, 
$10.08. 

By machine: 7 workmen, 8 operations, 12 hours 30 
minutes, $1.78. 

3. Making of 1,000 watch movements: 

By hand: 14 workmen, 453 operations, 341,896 hours, 
$80,822. 

By machine: X workmen, 1,088 operations, 8,343 
hours, $17.99. 

4. Making of 500 yards of twilled cottonade: 

By hand: 3 workmen, 19 operations, 7,534 hours, 
$135.61. 

By machine: 252 workmen, 43 operations, 84 hours, 
$6.81. 

5. Making of 100 pairs of cheap boots: 



\ *Thirteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 
! 1898 (Washington, lii99). 



48 COLLFXTIVISM AND INIU'STRIAL rVOLUTION. 
By hand: 2 workmen, s;^ oporations, 1,488 hours, 

Hy uiachinc: 113 workmen, l-'J oi)erations, 154 
hours, ;j^35.40. 

tj. Making of 1,000 pounds of broad in ono-pound 
loaves: 

Hy liand: 1 workman, 11 operations. 'JS hours, .$5.80. 

I»y machine, 1« workmen, Kj operations, 8 hours 58 
minutes, )<l.rir>. 

7. Making of 12 dozen men's jackets: 

By hand: 1 workman. 4 oporations, 840 hours, 
$50.4<). 

By niacliincv 11 workmen. 8 operations, 07 hours 15 
minut(*s, .^1L*.S(>. 

Such figures need no comment; they trace in letters 
of fire the inevitable destiny of the master-tailors, 
shoe-makers, bakers, Avatch-makt^rs, who do not pro- 
duce specialties or articles of luxury. 

In spite of the desperate efforts of the small middle 
class to preserve even a shadow of independence, 
hand labor for producing all the objects of current 
consumption is disappearing more and more before 
machine production, snljjugating an increasing num- 
ber of wage laborers. 

In (iermany, for example, from 1882 to 1805, the 
number of independent producers in the manufactur- 
ing industries diminished by 130,382, while the total 
number of industrial laborers increased by 8G1,4^I8. 

If now we reckon all the professions, industrial, 
commercial and agricultural, there is, since 1882, an 
absolute increase in the number of producers who are 
independent or call themselves so, as well as of em- 
ployes and laborers, but while this increase is only 5 
per cent for the independent producers, it is 20 per 
cent for the laborers and 10<-) per cent for the employes. 
More than three-fourths of the newcomers in the 
world of labor belong to the wage-working class, and 



I 



I 



THE DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. 49 

even in the total of the professions, the proportion of 
those working for wages is sensibly increasing at tho 
expense of the independent producers.* 

This is shown by the following table, which we bor- 
row from M. Rauchberg: 

Out of every hundred persons at work in the German 
empire in 1882 and in 1895, the count shows: 

Independent Persons working 
producers. for wages. 

1882. 1895. 1882. 1895. 

Agriculture 27.78 30.18 72.22 69.02 

Manufacturing 34.41 24.90 05.59 75.10 

Commerce 44.G7 36.07 55.33 63.93 

Totals 32.03 28.94 67.97 71.06 

Thus, in spite of the reduction in the number of 
farm laborers, of permanent day laborers, drawn in by 
the tentacles of the cities, the relative importance of 
the proletariat goes on increasing. 

Must we then say that fatally, inevitably, all the in- 
dependent producers are condemned, in a future more 
or less near, to be transformed into wage-workers. 

We have said elsewhere that a very different evolu- 
tion may be conceived, that personal property may be 
transferred into co-operative or social property, with- 
out necessarily passing through the capitalist stage.** 
On the other hand, it appears clearly that in a great 
number of cases, if personal property tends to dis- 
appear, the higher forms of capitalist production, in 
spite of the advantages which they offer from a ra- 
tional point of vrew, are scarcely at a stage to elimi- 

*See Rauchberg. Die Beru.fs-uhd GewerbezaehUmg Im 
Deiitschen Reich vom 14 Juni, 1895. (Braun's Archiv fuer 
soziale Gesetzgebung, 1899, pp. 611 and foil.) 

**See a report presented to the agricultural congress of 
Waremme on small rural proprietorship, in Vandervelde and 
Destree's 'Socialisme en Belgique," pp. 359 et seq. (Taris, 
Giard Briere, 1898.) 



50 COLLECmiSM AND INDISIRIAL KVOLU 1 ION. 

nate the lower, stagnant, miserable forms of home in- 
dustry, of small farming, of retail trade. 

The parasitism of middlemen, the sterile profusion 
of trad(;^s catering to luxury, the horrors of the sweat- 
ing system, the working of petty tracts of land with 
their "proprietors" with tive-cent incomes, all these 
are products of capitalism, and it seems as if they 
might have to last as long as capitalism itself. 

Perhaps, also, certain branches of independent pro- 
duction, some relics of peasant proprietorship, are 
destined to survive it. Nothing hinders us, indeed, 
from imagining a socialist state in which individual 
property and labor should co-exist with collective 
property and labor. 

Hut however that may be, the certain fact is that 
in the principal industries, those which answer to the 
most general and the most extended needs, the su- 
perior productivity of machinery and exploitation on 
a large scale tend to the extinction of personal prop- 
erty and isolated production. And the same causes 
bring their consequences: the capitalist forms of pro- 
duction and exchange, which characterize the present 
organization of labor, manifest an ever-growing ten- 
dency toward concentration and socialization. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALIST PROPERTY. 

•'Monopoly expands, ever expands, till it ends by 
bursting."— Proudhon. 

To the first phases of the concentration of capital- 
expropriation of independent producers, transforma- 
tion of trades into factories, collective or centralized, 
replacing of manufacture by machinofacture — a new 
phase succeeds, characterized by the struggle of the 
great capitalists against the small ones. 

In the most developed branches of industry and 
trade, the number of enterprises diminishes, in pro- 
portion to the increased importance of those which 
survive. Collective production replaces individual 
production; associated capital succeeds the isolated 
capitalists; it is the reign of corporations and com- 
binations of corporations— "gentlemen's agreements," 
pools and trusts— ending in the organization of gigan- 
tic monopolies, national or international. 

I.—CORPORATIONS. 

Corporations are found to-day in almost all branches 
of industry, and yet, at the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, Adam Smith, in a famous passage, applied to 
them the same language that is applied to-day to 
those who predict the socialization of the great in- 
dustries. 

"The only trades which it seems possible for a joint 
stock company to carry on successfully, without an 
exclusive privilege, are those of which all the opera- 
tions are capable of being reduced to what is called 
a routine, or to such a uniformity of method as 
admits of little or no variation. Of this kind is, first, 



52 COLLIXTIVISM AND INPI-STRIAL EVOLUTION 

the hanking trade; secondly, the trade of insurance, 
from fire, and from sea-rislv and eai)ture in time of 
war; thirdly, the tra(h' of making and maintaining a 
navi^Mble cut or eanal; and fourthly, the similar trade 
of bringing water for the supply of a great city."* 

Banks, insurance, management of navigable chan- 
nels, water works, are so many industries which are 
alr(^ady transformed or will shortly be transformed 
into public services, while the domain of corporations 
extends far beyond tlu^ narrow limits assigned by 
Adam Smith,— so true it is that the Utopia of to-day 
often becomes the reality of to-morrow. So it is not 
useless to recall that the arguments directed against 
collectivism are exactly those which were formerly 
opposed to corporations. 

At the time Avhen a number of joint stock banks 
were being established in England, an Englishman of 
experience, himself a banker, Lord Overstoue, ex- 
pressed doubts as to their success, for reasons which 
vividly recall the present objections to government 
banks: "I think," he said, "that everything neces- 
sary for the conduct of the affairs of a bank, unless 
it be a more divided responsibility, is lacking in joint 
stock banks. The affairs of a ])ank ro(iuire the con- 
stant, daily presence of persons particularly attentive 
to all the details and watching carefully hour by hour 
over all its affairs, something that no other business 
reiiuires. There is need also of prompt, Immediate 
decisions, whatever circumstances present themselves, 
and in many cases these decisions are of so pressing a 
nature that they cannot be deferred for consultation; 
moreover, each particular circumstance requires a dif- 
ferent treatment. Joint stock banks would be obliged 
to entrust their interests to agents, who would have to 
be tied down by certain general rules; these agents 



•Adam Smith. Woalth of Nations. Book r>, Chap. 1., ta.rx 
III. 



THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALIST PROPER IV. 53 

will not have the power to act like the private banker, 
according to the insensible gradations presented by 
^he character and the responsibility of the parties; 
neither will they be able to take it upon themselves 
to regulate the credit that it is well to extend to houses 
temporarily embarrassed, because they will not have 
the means of assuring themselves with enough cer- 
tainty of the favorable or unfavorable conditions 
which each affair presents."* 

In spite of these observations, so conclusive at first 
sight, the joint stock banks,— thanks to the superiority 
which a very large capital gave them— are more and 
more out-distancing the more modest individual 
houses: in 1896 there were in England 102 joint stock 
banks with 2,G95 branches and agencies, £450,000,000 
of deposits, and a capital stock of more than £43,- 
000,000. On the other hand, the private banks had de- 
clined from 201 in 1844 to 38, with £70,000,000 of de- 
posits and a capital of less than £12,000,000/^* 

The same evolution also is manifest in all industrial 
countries, as in all the most important branches of 
production and exchange. Everywhere the imper- 
sonal enterprise on a large scale is developing at the 
expense of private firms and of small production. 

These results are unmistakably shown for the Ger- 
man Empire*** by comparing the industrial census of 
1882 with that of 1895. 

In England, according to the joint stock year book, 



♦Quoted by Leroy-Beaulieu. Traite d'Economie Politique, 
IV., p. 499. (Paris, 1896.) 

**0n the causes of capitalist concentration in the banking 
business, see Steele: Bank Amalgamations (the Economic 
Journal, December, 1896). 

***Berufs-und Gewerbezaehlung im Deutschen Reich (June 
5, 1882, and June 14, 1895). 

On the interpretation of the statistical facts contained in 
these census reports, regard to industrial concentration, see 
the chapter of Kautsky, "Grossbetrieb und Klelnbetrieb," in 
"Bernstein und das sozial demokratiscke Frogramm," pp. 
49 to 80. 



54 CULLLCTIVISM ANU IMjLSIRIAL HVOLUTION. 

the number of the corporations has almost trebkni 
since 1805. Whole industries have passed from the 
individual form to the corporative form. Tliat was 
the case notably with the brewerii's, the transforma- 
tion of which was almost completely elTected in tlie 
space of three years: 188G-188U.* 

In the United States the bulletins published by the 
departments of labor reveal the same tendencies. In 
Massachusetts, for example, the number of private 
firms, in all industries taken together, increased onl\ 
y.o3 per cent during the decennial period, 188o-181)rj. 
^'hile the increase of corporations exceeded 77 per 
cent. 

And in the nine principal industries, which alone 
represent more than 47 per cent of the total value of 
goods manufactured, the development of the corporate 
form is accompanied by a siaisible reduction in the 
number of private firms.** This can be inferred from 
the table given on the opposite page. 



I 



♦See tlie Intcrestiag article of John B. C. Kershaw In the 
Fortnightly Review I -May IWO): Joint stock enterprise ana 
our manufacturing industries.— Among the cause.^ of the 
passing' of a lar;je hunibcr of private l«>rms to thf' corpora- 
tive form the author mentions: (1) The appearance of pro- 
fessional promoters on the scene; (2) the liecreuse ot prottts 
during economic depri^siun: many industrials en«leavored to 
combine tlieir lines of business in corporations when they 
realized that the time of large profits was over; (o) the grow- 
ing strength of trade-unions; the industrial lead»'rs under- 
stood thai: the best policy for preventing the growth of a 
publi<' sentiment favoring the encroachments of labor too 
much would be to increase the number of bourgeois Inter- 
ested in industrial affairs: A large and increasing proportion 
of the general public i.*; now llnancially involved In all the 
struggles between capital and labor and our manufacturers 
feel assured that thn danger of seeing the workmen sustained 
by a solid and enthusiastic movement of public opinion. In 
their demands for sliorter hours and higher wages, no longer 
exists to-day" (p. 821). 

♦♦'I'he annual st.itisties of manufactures, 1SU7. (Twelfth 
report, in the liulletln of tlie Department of Labor. Sepieui- 
ber, IbMij, Washington, 1899.) 



i 



THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALIST PROPERTY. 



55 



Table showing the progress of capitalist concentra- 
tion in the manufacturing industries of Massachusetts 
from 1885 to 1895: 



cggi asAO 
asvaaoMi 
JO oaaa 



5!^ 






Q88I asAO 
aevaaoN.1 
JO oaaa: 



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JO IVlOi 



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'SHiVOiahiiS 
*8iL8Iiai 



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-aOJHOD 



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■^ {> 00 — ^ (JQ 05 CO ift 

o t- i> ir: r-^ »-< 2Q 



'"^'^GOOCCiO-'^T-ccC 

t>i-'00O«5o'-cocco 

O T-^ CSJ «D CO ^ T-1 -rji 



t>^ ^ . .(N 



00 ^'Mifi^Oi'*^ '-' 



•SKHIJ 

iaiVAiad 



OiCCOOQ'-iCO^t>'^ 
OS Tfi CO o «o «5 C<1 ,-1 o> 



OS b 



a> 






O c8 

. a) fl fl 
*r^ a ^ a 



. . a) a c 
o oj o 9,^^ a^ 



fiO 






^ 3 



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t- o 



® f3 fl 

M 3 S 

o'o'o 



^U ( y ii.l .iA 1 1 > i - M -..SI' I .\ 1 1 1 "- 1 !•: i \ 1. i-. \ < )i.l i i( k\ . 

It may also l»o iiU't'iriHl i'miu this tal)le, which ropre- 
s(»nts a nation most highly ih'vt'h)po(l iiidiistrially, that 
th«' concc^ntration of capital operates with a very un- 
('(pial intensity in the different l»ranehes of prcjdue- 
tion. lUit wheiH.n*er capital penetrates, the struggle 
for existence between enterprises shows itself. 

Those less fully equipped resist with the energy of 
despair. They make superhuman efforts to escape 
from bankruptcy, and to make up for their technical 
disadvanta^^es, tlH\v economize on hand-work and pro- 
lon^r tiie lalK)r day beyond the limits prescribed by 
humanity. 

At this stajjre of devel()i>nient, productii>n is abso- 
lutely anarchistic, and the irrt'sponsiliility of individu- 
als stands out in bold relief. 

A political event brought about at the other end of 
the world, a wai*. a poor crop, an improved process, a 
chan.ui' in tl'c law of tariff or l»ounty may, from one 
day to the next, ruin the most iniidli^ent and i)rudent 
manufacturer. 

The Roers besiege Kimberly; that is a disaster for 
the diamond-workers of Amsterdam or of Anvers. 

Raw American cotton goes up two cents a pound 
(November. lS99j, and cotton mills find themselves in 
a crisis in the midst of general prosperity. 

M. Meline's protectionist policy triumphs: the vine- 
growers of IIoeylaert-lez-Hruxelles. the ijrincipal pur- 
veyors of forced grapes for French tables, suddenly 
see their principal market closed. 

Suppose that to-morrow the countries of the conti- 
nent were to suppress the excise franchises and the 
export bounties ^vhich they grant sugar manufactur- 
ers, obliging us to pay twice as much for this product 
as do the English who buy it of us: that means ruin 
for the English manufacturers of l)iscuits, confections, 
syrups and jams, who now profit by the sale of sugar 
at a very low i)rice in llie London market. 



THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALIST PROPERl-Y. 57 

Suppose, on the contrary, that the Anglo-Saxon im- 
perialists, to protect the manufacture of cane sugar in 
the colonies, impose heavy import duties on beet sugar 
manufactured in Europe: that means the ruin of the 
sugar industry on the continent. 

Capitalists are thus living under the perpetual men- 
ace of Inevitable disasters, and, to put the finishing 
touch on our industrial anarchy, it often happens that 
the most powerful among them, those who have the 
most "sand,"* try to make themselves masters of the 
field, and destroy the capital of their competitors, by 
selling their products for some time below cost. In- 
stance the well-known story of those two American 
companies, which each sought to monopolize the trans- 
portation of cattle, by cutting rates. Finally one of 
them, so goes the story, not being able to go lower, 
bought up all the cattle within reach and shipped 
them over the rival line. 

It is by resorting to such proceedings that John D. 
Rockefeller, the oil king, succeeded in getting hold of 
the iron mines of Lake Superior. Having acquired 
the richest deposits, and employing the most perfect 
technical processes, he became a formidable competi- 
tor to the neighboring mines. If they succumbed in 
the struggle, he bought them in at low prices, if he 
thought them rich enough. "If they resisted too long, 
he applied the process of 'underselling;' he sold be- 
low the market, thus forcing them to lower their prices 
in a way ruinous for them, until bankruptcy or volun- 
tary submission had placed them at his feet. He 
"•ould for his part without embarrassment lose for 

^veral months, if necessary, on every ton of mineral 
sold. He had the longer purse. He knew that the 



♦French "estomac;" our American slang seems to be a fair 
equivalent.— Translator. 



58 COLLECTIVISM ANM) INUl'STKlAi. i. v . u,l 1 iw.n . 

resuurees of his competitors would be exhausted be- 
fore his own."* 

Such activities constitute, we may add, in different 
degrees of brutality, the current coin of the relations 
between capitalists. 

Some one may say that the consumer prolits by it, 
that "when thieves fall out, honest men get their 
dues." 

Yes, till the moment when the victors, relieved of 
their rivals, reimburse themselves liberally for their 
temporary losses by charging up the cost of the war 
to the pul)lic. 

Competition, says Troudhon. kills competition. 

Sooner or later coxnes a time when the inconven- 
iences of this state of things, of this permanent an- 
archy, become such that the capitalists are forced to 
end it by agreements between the producers. When 
there remain only a small number of well-armed com- 
petitors, confronting each other in battle array, their 
course is to treat together, to cease a useless and bur- 
densome war, to come to terms with those whom they 
might not succeed in crushing. 

Then begins a new phase of capitalist evolution: the 
regime of cartels and trusts. 



2. CAPITALIST MONOPOLIES. 

The passage from anar'*hy to monopoly presents two 

successive stages: the former, incomplete fusion 

(agreements, rings, pools), the latter complete fusion 

(trusts) of the industrial or commercial enterprises. 

I. Agreements 
The agreement (cartel) is a free and voluntary coiili- 
tinn contracted by houses in the same line with a view 
to monopolize the market in cumnu/n while preserv- 



♦Paiil (le Rousiers. Li>s iu«lustrles luouoponsres aux lOrats- 
I'liis. p. kss. (Paris. 1898.) 



THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALIST PROPERTY. 50 

ing to their several enterprises a greater or less auton- 
omy.* 

Proceeding from the simple to the most complex we 
may distinguish four species of agreements: Agree- 
ments as to price, agreements as to production, agree- 
ments as to marketing, and agreements as to division 
of profits. 

I. Agreements as to price. 

The agreement as to price is the most rudimentary 
form. It is an alliance or convention by which a por- 
tion or all of the industrial enterprises in the same 
line of production bind themselves to buy their raw 
material at a uniform price, or to sell their finished 
products at a price agreed upon. 

As an example of an agreement as to purchase, in- 
, 'stance the sugar manufacturers who impose a single 
price upon the farmers who furnish beet roots. 

As to agreements regarding selling price, they have 
been more numerous for some years, especially for 
products which are bulky and expensive to ship and 
which, consequently, cannot be sold to advantage out- 
side a certain radius. The producers profit by this 
fact to raise their prices without having to fear the 
competition of enterprises too far away to enter into 
an efficient competition. 

Every one knows, for example, Of the agreements 
regarding coke or coal which exist at the present time 
in all countries. In Belgium, notably, the understand- 
ing between all the mine owners has been complete 
for many years as far as domestic coal is concerned. 
As for soft coal, that black bread of industry, the 
mining companies have recently formed syndicates 
whose dominance weighs heavily upon the rest of the 
industrial world. It became necessary for the ad- 
ministration of the railroad department, in order to 



♦Liefmann. Les caracteres et modalites des cartels. (Ke- 
vue d'Economie politique. July, 1899.) 



6o COLLKCTlVl^M AND IN Dl -.s'lKl AL KVOLl'TIOX. 

lower the excessive claiuis ol" the coal barons, to place 
orders in Enj^land and— characteristic sign of the 
times— for the senatorial commission of industry, in 
the hope of preventing a recurrence of such condi- 
tions, to authorize the workinj^ by the state of a certain 
number of coal mines. 

2. Agreements as to production. 

The agreement as to production is one by which the 
heads of industries pledge themselves to restrict their 
product in a degree determined upon. 

This form of agreement is made very frequently in 
the glass industry, the sugar industry, the distilling 
industry, etc. 

In the course of November, 181)9, the agreement its 
to production formed by cotton spinners took in 
lCA),00i) spindles out of a total of 880,000 spindles exist- 
ing in Belgium. 

"With a view"— we quote from the lU^vue du Tra- 
vail*— to remedying the crisis produced by the depress- 
ing influence of a stock abnormally swollen and to 
prevent a stoppage in manufacture which would make 
itself necessary within a longer or shorter time, the 
Cotton Association of Belgium decided that a large 
number of spinners should work *short time' in a part 
of the factory in such a way as to reduce the product 
l)y one-sixth." 

Agreements of this sort are the logical consequence 
and, indeed, the only condition of permanence of 
agrtH^ments as to price; as long as prcxluction is not 
limited agi'eements relative to price cannot be lasting. 

In a general way, moreover, we may say that the 
consolidation of industries by agreements constantly 
menaced by external competition or internal treaclieiy 
is almost always su])ordinated to a transfer from a 
simpler form to forms that are more complex. 



•RcviH' du Travail, Deceiiiher. ISiH), p. l^J3, 



THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALIST PROPERTY. 6l 

3. Agreements as to market. 

The agreement as to market does not confine itself 
to fixing prices and limiting production. It is specially 
characterized by the partition of custom and of orders 
according to geographical lines. "Spheres of influ- 
ence" are established for each industrial factory, each 
one may do as he pleases in his district, but he must 
not impinge on the district of his neighbor. 

The most remarkable type of this form of agreement 
—more and more diffused notably in the coal and 
metal industries— is the syndicate of Rheno-Westpha- 
lian mines. Whoever ^Yishes to buy Rheno-Westpha- 
lian coal, directly or indirectly, finds himself no longer 
in the presence of competing companies, but of one 
single company delegated by the syndicate to fill the 
order in question. There is then a division of orders 
according to their source, but there is not yet— as we 
shall find in the most developed order of agreements— 
a division of profits. 

4. Agreements as to division of profits. 

These agreements, known under the name of pools 
in England and the United States, leave the enter- 
prises distinct and allow their members a certain 
autonomy, but the profits are divided pro rata to the 
capital employed by each. 

As a type of this form of syndicate we might in- 
stance the Dynamite Trust Company, which has con- 
solidated most of the English and German dynamite 
factories and has concluded an agreement relative to 
the division of profits with the other dynamite and 
cannon powder factories situated in these two coun- 
tries. 

In agreements of this kind the socialization of in- 
dustry is almost complete, but however powerful and 
however strongly organized these vast factories may 
be, there still remains the possibility of internal dis- 
sensions and competition on the part of new compa- 



62 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRL\L FA'OLUTION. 

nios. And ('specially in commercial lines where the 
^'rcatiT part <»f the <ai)ital is circulating rather than 
lixed. as in manufacturing, these comix'ting compa- 
nies may spring up from one moment to the next. 
Thus, it is necessary to oppose to this contingent com- 
petition an organization so solid and capital so power- 
ful that the crushing out of new enterprises may be 
always possible. 

II. Ttie Trusts. 

A\> thus arrive by insensible transitions at the mo- 
ment when the agreements more or less complex cul- 
minate in Trusts; that is to say, in the fusion of asso- 
ciated enterprises. 

Every one knows that from now on this is the domi- 
nant form in the I'nited States, where the develop- 
ment of capitalism has not met the obstacles which 
are opposed to it in Europe by the remains of former 
social structures. 

^'Everything is more and more organized into trusts" 
—said a citizen of Chicago to Paul de Rousiers, who 
was gathering documents and facts for his book on 
the monopolized industries in the United States. "See 
these immense department stores, which sell kitchen 
utensils, shoes, furniture and linen; they are destroy- 
ing small trade; they are making competition impossi- 
ble. They are reducing to the situation of employes 
people who might have directed an independent 
business. See these colossal structures in iron and 
brick, business buildings twenty stories high, tilled 
-with thousands of otHces. counting houses, banks, thus 
gi^ ing to the land which supports them and to neigh- 
])oring land an enormous value to the detriment of 
other land which does not tind an occupant, on ac- 
count of the excessive piling up of stories in the busi- 
ness quarter of the city. See those giganti^ packinfx 
houses, where all the work of slaughtering and pre- 



THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALIST PROPERTY. 63 

serving meats is carried on. The retail butcher has 
disappeared among us, the refrigerating cars trans- 
port quarters of dressed beef into all the cities of the 
Union, >Yhere they are sold in meat markets. Four 
men, the Big Four, destroy the butcher business in 
free America. Look at the great mills of Minneapolis, 
which are centralizing the flour of the Northwest. 
See our great railway companies, w^hich are destroy- 
ing or absorbing the small rival companies. Look at 
petroleum, sugar, whisky, twine, anthracite, glue, 
steel, linseed and cotton seed oil, India rubber, etc., 
all monopolized by a few individuals."* 

According to the Annual of the Journal of Com- 
merce and Commercial Bulletin of New York (March, 
1899) there w^ere at this time in the United States 
353 trusts of varying importance with a total capital 
of $5,832,882,842. 

The most formidable of these trusts w^ere the Joint 
Traffic Association, capitalized at $1,404,000,000; the 
Reading Coal Company at §150,000,000; the Western 
Union at $95,400,000; the American Sugar Refining 
Company at $75,000,000; the Standard Oil Company 
at $100,000,000; the Wholesale Grocers' Association 
of New- England at $75,000,000; the Central Lumber 
Company at $70,000,000, Since March, 1899, many 
new trusts have been formed so that in the month 
of May, 1900, in an article plublished by the Review 
of Reviews, an author came to the conclusion that 
"if one w-ere to add up the capital of the different 
trusts operating in various places, but legally incorpo- 
rated in the United States, it would certainly reach 
I a sum which would not fail far short of the unheard- 
of figure of ten billion dollars, ten times the value 
of the war indemnity paid by France to Germany 
after the disasters of 1870." 



♦Paul de Rousiers. Les industries monopolisees aux Etats- 
Unis, p. 2. (Paris, Colin, 1898.) 



64 COI,LK( TIN ISM AM) INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

Anions llu'se ^iaiit ()r;4:;iiiizatiuiis, the must chanif- 
tcristic and tliosc whicli have served as models for 

all tin' oihrrs. are, wIiIkmh <lou]>t. the oil, sii;;a : 
and si.M'l inists.'^ 

Tlir Siaiid.-iid Mil Company, which dates from 1872, 
cnniiols all iIk' jhim' lines, liundri'ds of miles iu length, 
which conn. Ml the [daces of production, the oil lields 
of rcnn<\ hania and Ohio, with the refineries situ- 
ated on the Atlantic const or on the banks of the 
great lakes. All these relineril's are the property of 
the trust. Nine persons are tlie owners of its gigantic 
capital of .s;iOo,(MM). 110(1. 'i'lidr monopoly, against 
which all re[)i-essive 1 iws havi' daslied themselves in 
vain, is alm(>st a])sohite. Morr'over, it is believed 
that the American trust. enteriuLT a theater still niorc^ 
vast, has concluded an understanding with the own- 
ers of the oil fields of (lalicia and the Caucasus— a 
triple alliance of a new kind, by which th(» Rocke- 
f(dlers. the IJothscliilds of London and the Rothschilds 



♦Ibid, pp. 1«;-TT and 130-1S3. The ronduslon in du Konsier - 
hool<. with all lis wi'alih of <'vidi'nre. stops considt-ratily sborr 
of socialistic conclusions. Tlie uullior, in fact, attil!>uu»s tbe 
development of the trusts either to the special conditions 
of certain Industries las oil rctiuiug) or to the intlutnrc of 
protective laritTs (sugar retiuinij:. eic). A refutaiion of ihia 
thesis l»y a non-socialist author will l»e found in tlie addre.ss 
delivered by Prof. W. J. Ashley, at the annual dinner of the 
Hritish Kcon<jniic Association. March 21', l^id ("The Ameri- 
can Trusts."— Economic Journal, June, 1>9U). After showing 
that the tendency toward monopoly exists in all industrial 
countries and In no way constitutes a phenomenon peculiar 
to the I'nlted States, Ashley concluded In these terms: 
"Long before we arrive at the socialist si ate. supposing we 
ever do, the fundamental ditiicuity of sociall^m, the distri- 
bution (){ the social product, without the aid of competition, 
will, under some form or other, be added to the cares of' 
every practical politician." The orator insists, in closing,, 
upon the necessity of studying the monopolization of the 
great Industries in England, where, in spite of the abundance* 
of facts, the literature upon this »iuestion Is very meager. 
See, h(jwever. Macrosty's article. "The (irowth of Monopoly 
In British Industry" (Contemporary Review, March, ISUD). 



THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALIST PROPERTY. 65 

of Vienna have divided among themselves the Euro- 
pean market. 

The sugar trust, or, to speak more accurately, the 
American Sugar Refining Company, formed under the 
protection of formidable protective tariffs, monopo- 
lizes today the entire industry, whereas in 1S80 there 
were in the United States 49 firms, with a capital 
of $27,500,000. To consolidate this monopoly, the 
trust bought railroads and factories of every kind; 
it is, moreover, interested in numerous other enter- 
prises, such as the flour trust of New York and 
Minnesota, the department store trust of Brooklyn, 
street railways in Providence, several railroad com- 
panies and a number of banks. 

The steel trust owes its foundation, at the opening 
of 1897, to the alliance between Carnegie, the famous 
Pittsburg steel manufacturer, and Rockefeller, the 
oil and iron king. 

Carnegie already occupied the front rank among 
the makers of Bessemer steel; he was at the center 
of the richest coal basin of Pennsylvania, that prom- 
ised land of carbon. If the minerals from Lake 
Superior could be laid down at Pittsburg on as favor- 
able terms as at Chicago or Cleveland, his competitors 
were done for. 

On his side, as we have seen, Rockefeller had 
acquired the magnificent iron fields of Lake Superior. 
He had bought railroads, built docks, and equipped 
a fleet of enormous ships specially adapted for trans- 
porting minerals. At the end of 1896, this fleet was 
in condition to wage a ruinous competition against 
the antique structures previously used for transport- 
ing minerals. "The king of the iron mines,'- says 
De Rousiers, "could give his hand to the steel king 
and with him could despise any possible competition." 
Into these conditions came the Rockefeller-Carnegie 
combination: the Lake Superior Company leased for 



66 CULLKCTIVls.M AND INUl'STRIAL EVOLUIION. 

tifty years its niiiu's and its lleet to tliu Carui»;;K 
CoiJiiiaiiy. which ihtiiccfurtli absolutely controlled the 
luiwkrl. 

The (((iisrciiiriu-i's of this coiict'iit rat i«>ii have nat- 
urally \)vvn bad lor the other producers, but it can 
n(>t be said that ihcy have beeu bad for the con 
suniers; while realizin;^ enormous benefits, ('arne;;ir 
and Rocki^feller have beeu able to reduce their prices 
and undcital;c the cnHiuest of tlic Kuropean market. 

In a ;,^cncral way it may also be said that the ;;rave 
I)oliiical and social in«<>nveniences of these ^reat 
monopolies an* partially made up for by the advant- 
air<\s of the socialization of labor, and the superior 
techni(iue of production on a vast scale. Defective 
tools, anticpiated nu^thods. superannuated industrial 
structures disai>pear. crushed by the competition or 
systematically suppressed by the actual administra 
tion of the trusts. Thus, for example, the whisky 
trust, which had included SO factories, closed (>8 of 
them at oiicc. to c<>ncentrate production in tlu^ other 
12, provided Ns'ith all the im])rovemeuts of modern 
technique.* 

Thanks to thi'se processes of artificial selection, 
which end. in the last analysis, in diminishing the 
cost of production, it often hai)pens that the trusts, 
established with a view to raising prices, end, after a 
certain time, by lowering them. But it remains no 
less true that at the start the consumers pay more 
than they paid before— oiu* hiaisekeepers have expe- 
rienced this in th(» case of kerosene, and that later, 
when the advantages of large-scale production begin 
to benefit them, they still pay more than they would 
have to j.ay. if the products they buy were not loaded 
with heavy taxes for the benetit of the capitalistic 
monopolies. 



•Licfmann, 1. c. {Ihv. d'Econ. pel.. 1S?0. p. V>:>7.) 



THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALIST PROPERTY. 67 

As an American paper said recently, it will soon 
be so that we can neither drink nor eat, nor dress, 
nor consume anything whatever without paying trib- 
ute to some trust. 

Suppose, for example, that you were dining in some 
New York or Philadelphia restaurant. The waiter 
brings the "eye-opener:" the cocktail, the principal 
element in which is whisky, is controlled by the 
whisky trust (capital, $35,000,000). The soup is from 
the Chicago beef trust ($100,000,000); the oysters from 
the newly established oyster trust ($5,000,000). You 
ask for relishes— radishes, celery, olives—get your 
tribute ready for the Farm and Dairy Product trust 
<$15,000,000); with the fish appears the Fish trust 
($10,000,000); with the roast, the Prowls trust ($20,- 
000,000). The dessert arrives; the pudding is a prod- 
uct of the American Flour Company ($120,000,000); 
the fruits, of the American Fruit Co.; the biscuits, of 
the National Biscuit Company; the ices, of the Amer- 
ican Ice Cream Company. If you are pleased to 
drink a cup of coffee or smoke a cigar, do not forget 
the Coffee syndicate ($60,000,000), and the Tobacco 
trust ($75,000,000). Quite a number of trusts at once. 

And what is true for the table is no less so for the 
other necessities of life. With an increasing swift- 
ness, the trusts, thanks to their superior productivity, 
are invading all branches of industry, ceaselessly^ con- 
solidating their triple dominion, economic, social and 
political. For it is not only the consumers but also 
and especially the workers from the social point of 
view, and the mass of the citizens, from the political 
point of view, who experience the various ills of a 
system where everything contributes to build up the 
supremacy of the great capitalists. 

It is indeed beyond doubt that the concentration 
realized by the trusts, while increasing the cohesion 
of the employers and swellinjl* the reserve army of 



68 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL KVuLUTION. 

labor, weakens to that «le^ree the relative power of 
the labor unions. 

On the other hand, when the workingmen, realizing 
that economic means do not alone suffice to assure 
them victory, turn to political action, they tind them- 
selves in the presence of the plutocracy of the ruling 
classes, occupyini: all the positions, trafficking in all 
the laws, inspiring all th(» resolutions of a parliamen- 
tary or administrative body which is too often servile 
and corrupt. It is the trusts which rule in the White 
House, deliberate in the houses of Congress, regulate 
the protective tariff for their own profit and decide 
as a court of last resort on the nation's foreign 
I>olicy. 

Hut however odious their tyranny, however revolt- 
ing may be the abuses Of capitalistic api)ropriation, 
it should not be forgotten that the great monopolies. 
by centralizing the forces of production, are making 
ready for the coming of a new system. Whoever 
would restrict their development would thus obstruct 
the expansion of industry itself; to socialize their 
advantages should be the end to pursue. This has 
been well expressed by Daniel De Leon, an American 
collectivist, in the following terms: 

"The ladder up which mankind has been climbing 
toward civilization, the ever more powerful tool of 
production, is the storm center around which the 
modern social storm rages. 

"The capitalist class seeks to keep it for its own ex- 
clusive use. 

*'The middle class seeks to break it down, thereby 
throwing civilization ]>ack. 

"The proletariat seeks to preserve it and improve 
It. and open it to all." 



CHAPTER III. 

OBJECTIONS. 

"Opportet haereses esse." 
— TertuUian. 

If we try to take in at a glance the industrial solu- 
tion we have just described, it seems like a gigantic 
and persistent effort, tracing its way across the cen- 
turies, in the direction of the socialization of labor 
by the concentration of the means of production and 
exchange. 

This concentration shows itself under two distinct 
aspects, although generally correlated and reacting on 
each other: concentration of workships; concentration 
of enterprises. 

On the one hand, in many industries, the individual 
workshops, by reason of their technical inferiority, 
are disappearing or no longer play more than a local 
or accessory role: the Niebelungen forge makes way 
for the machine shops of Seraing, the rolling mills of 
Pittsburg or the cannon foundries of Essen or Creu- 
sot. 

On the other hand, individual enterprises, ever en- 
larging the circle of their action, end by giving way 
to corporations, impersonal or co-operative, which are 
indispensable for bringing together the capital re- 
quired for production on a large scale. Then come 
coalitions, agreements, and finally the trust, the com- 
plete monopoly, the unified organization, more or less 
stable, of production and exchange. 

It is this which already exists, to different degrees, 
in the industries (taking this word in its broadest 
sense) which are commonly considered as fundamen- 
tal, either because they answer to essential needs, or 
because they furnish the raw materials for other 



JO COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

hniuclios of production, or llnally, IxH-aust* they render 
lo tbi' <oiiniiiniif y scrvici's having so gentMul a char- 
acter tliai thry hiKJ ((> Ik* considered as public serv- 
ices. 

Such are, for example, railroad and canal transpor- 
tation, banks of discount and issue, posts, telegraphs 
and tclcpii(»ncs, insurance, in a word the central 
organs of the vast api»llances \vhl<-li insure, facilitate, 
accelerate or regulate ilie circulatory UKjveuient of 
wealth and the relations between men. 

Again, among the industries producing raw mate- 
rials, those which furnish other trades with coal, 
iron, wood or stone. 

Finally, those whicli iii.inul'nciui'e or sui»ply prod- 
ucts answ(>ring to lu^eds which are most general, most 
dilTused among all social strata: bread and water, 
salt and sugar. ker(>sene and illuminating gas, tobacco 
and alcohol, clothing, shoes, and to a less degree, milk, 
butter, oleomargarine, butchers' meat, colonial prod- 
ucts, drugs, etc. 

These different branches emi)loy without doubt tlu' 
great mass of the working population. If they came 
under collective ownership, the domain of private 
industry would be limited (»nough in extent. Now 
already many of them are socialized entire or in 
part: monoi)olies of salt, tobacco, alcohol, state man- 
agement of railways, posts, telegraphs and telephone's, 
more or less complete nationalization of banks of 
Issue, with the State sharing in the profits; munici- 
palization of water works, gas, electricity, street rail- 
ways, slaughter houses; collective or communal prop- 
erty in forests, mines, canals and roads. 

As for tlu' fimdanu'Utal industries renuiining in the 
sphere of private capital, nearly all exhibit -by rea- 
son of the large-scale production which the extent of 
their nuirkets necessitates a hiL'^h degree of cai)italist 
concentration: the telegraplis in the United States 



OBJECTIONS. 71 

are in the hands of two *companies; a few large life 
insurance companies divide the world among them; 
the central banks of issue, even when they have not 
an absolute monopoly, are ' sweeping the field clear 
of competitors; the triple alliance of the oil, the 
sugar and the whisky trust assures the dominance of 
a handful of capitalists; the metal industry, the coal 
industry and the textile industry represent the most 
perfect types of large-scale production. And even 
in the food and clothing industries, which seem to 
make an exception to the rule, the great department 
stores, the co-operative societies and the various forms 
of technical or commercial concentration, are begin- 
ning to eliminate or to bring completely under their 
control a great number of petty retailers. 

Whatever then may be the number of the accessory 
industries born of the increasing division of labor, It 
is beyond doubt that in the near future all the funda- 
mental industries will be socialized, at least so far as 
production is concerned. And this movement of cen- 
tralization shows itself so incontestably that the very 
opponents of socialism can not think of denying it. 
.But they contest the general trend of what is being 
done; they reject the conclusions drawn from it, and, 
along with certain socialists, they oppose to what 
they call the dogma of capitalist concentration a 
series of objections, of which the most important are 
these: 

"1. The number of small enterprises, at least in 
commerce and agriculture, increases instead of dimin- 
ishing; we can not then speak of a general law of 
capitalist concentration in all spheres of production. 

"2. Moreover, the concentration of production does 
not imply the concentration of fortunes; far from re- 
ducing itself to the profit of a few magnates of cap- 



•Both controlled by one syndicate.— Translator. 



72 L(JLLKCHV1.-,.M AND lNDU>rRlAL LVOLUTION. 

italisiii. iln' nuinluT uf dwuits rathiT teuds to iu- 
( roast'; ihe imijersoual corporation is dumocratiziug 
capital. 

'•;i. Amou;: the worlviiiir classes even, the develop- 
ment of saviu^^s is l.uildin;: up small proprietorship 
imder another lorm. 

••It is not then trtie to say tliat the evolution of 
capitalism ends in buildiuij: up two antaj^^onistic 
classes, one characterized by property without labor, 
the other by labor without property." 

W(» shall examine briefly what ground there may 
;»<• for these ditTerent objections. 

1. Workinjj:men's Savings. The Belgian investiga- 
tion of 1802 into the wages and expenses of laborers 
enables us to appraise at its just value the "capital- 
ist property" which the proletariat accumulates in the 
savings banks. It shows, in effect, that out of tlu* 
total of workingmen's incomes observed by the bu- 
reau of industry, only 1.8 per cent of the receipts 
came from other revenues than wages or public re- 
lief.* 

Surely, the ifl()O,0OO,f)O0 of savings bank deposits 
(1808) do not fail to make an imposing total. More 
than half a l)illit)n francs, some one will say, that is 
an immense suuil Yes, but it must not be forgotten 
that this half billion is divided among 1,500,(XK) ac- 
counts, that the largest of these do not belong to 
workingmen's families, and tliat when everything is 
Counted the average deposit amomits tt> .$T1.'J('», say, 
an ainiual income of .^L*..'!*. 

out of each hundred accounts there were 4*2.2 from 
1 to -20 francs; 11).2 from 21 to 100 francs; 18.7 from 
KH to 500 francs; (*).!) from ool to 1.(km> francs; 13.0 
from 1,001 francs u\). 



•"Rudgots ouvrliTs pour le niols tl' Avrll. 16l»l. I'roportlon 
uf \vii;,'r.s and other receipts to tht* total resources, pp. 43iJ 
It scti. (Hruxclles: Weisseubrueii, IStC) 



OHJKCTIONS. 73 

Thus, more than GO per cent of the savings bank 
accounts were less than 100 francs ($19.30). Add to 
this the contents of money-drawers or wool stockings, 
the sums deposited in private savings banks, the funds 
of workingmen's associations, the capital invested in 
cheap homesteads, and you will come none the less 
to the conclusion that it is bitter irony to try to make 
proletarians pass for budding capitalists. 

2. The Democratization of Capital. "In the Social 
Democrac3%" says Edward Bernstein, "the opinion 
predominates that a concentration of fortunes goes 
on equally with the concentration of capital. Now 
this is not at all the case. The working of the im- 
personal corporation opposes to a considerable extent 
this tendency toward centralization of fortunes by 
centralization of enterprises. It permits a consider- 
able division of the capital already concentrated, and 
renders superfluous the appropriation of capital by a 
few isolated magnates, in view of the concentration 
of industrial enterprises."* 

We have no idea of denying w^hat truth there is In 
these observations. It w^ould be a manifest error 
to identify these two phenomena, concentration of 
property and concentration of production. 

Proprietorship in land may, for example, be con- 
centrating while the land is being rented out in small 
parcels for cultivation. On the other hand, the cre- 
ation of great enterprises in the form of impersonal 
corporations does not by itself prove that the concen- 
tration of fortunes keeps pace with the concentration 
of the means of production; but still less does it com- 
pel us to conclude with Bernstein that to the centrali- 
zation of capital under the form of corporations corre- 
sponds a decentralization of fortunes under the form 
of shares and bonds. 



♦Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus, p. 47. 



74 COLLKCIIVIS.M AM) INDUS'! RI A L KXOl.rTION. 

Ill his rrply \o HiTUstein*, Karl Kaiitbiky shows vory 
cU'Miiy, (>u the c-oiiirary, that the arKiniieiits iir^ed in 
siipixJiM of his assert lull an* rither iiui ijcrtiih'iu or 
t'lse iiiaiiit'i'sily »'rroiuM)iis. 

'I'liai ihc (Irvrlopiiiriii of la rjxe-scalo prodiictlou in- 
rrcascs ilif absoluic iiuiiilicr of tlit' rapitalists, enjuy- 
iiiir ri'vciiiic wiilmm work, is mnU'iilable; but at the 
saint' liiuo tlio nuiiihcr ol" proletarians is increasing 
in oven ;;reator proportions, and this double move- 
ment is eominy: about at the expense of the various 
(•atep)ries of indept^ndeiit i»rodurers. artisans, small 
employers, peasani proprietors. 

It is true that liscal statistics are (]U<»uh1. relative to 
the income tax. to b(»lster up the claim that the num- 
ber of owners of the intermediate class, the small or 
average bourgeoisie, is increasing: instead of diminish- 
ing:. Hut. admit tiim- thai these statistics deserve the 
contideiice reposed in them, the increase in the num- 
ber of incomes exceeding the minimum requisite of 
existence does not at all prove an increase in the 
number of capitalist proprietors. 

These incomes, as a matter of fact, may come from 
labor and not from property. In Saxony, for example. 
Ilerkner. from the liscal statistics of \H1\) and 181)4, 
shows that tlie two social strata whose relative iu- 
creasi' is the -reatest are the workinjjmen of average 
condition and the Lrronp of millionaires.** 



*HeIusteiu uinl d.is sozialdt'iUMkra! is»h«' I'ru^raniin, pp. 
80 et s. 

♦•SiM' Ibis taiiU' citt'd l)y Kant sky. pa;;e Ss of the Cierman 
rdition. 

Persons ha\ini: Increase. 

an incnnic of 18Tl>. ism Al)Soliite. Per ct. 

S4)n marks 8'2S,GM') \)l'2,'Su 14:i.571 IT.JJ 

SOU to l.(XMl marks KM.Ii^Jli :^:m.'.>74 ll>i:.«;i2 IP). 4 

l.coo tn 'A,'MM\ mark< C.l.SlO UXI.l.SC 4A,'A2(J 71. ti 

:<,:{(M) t(» '.>.r(io njiirks l.M.07'J 41. SIM) 17, SIS 74.0 

!».«Uf<i to r.4.n<M) marixs. . . , . 4,(;s:t io,r)i.s 5,s:r) i:)4.4 

More than 54,U0g marks.. 238 S8G 048 272.U 



OBJECTIONS. 75 

The enormous progress of social productivity re- 
acts, in spite of many deplorable exceptions, upon the 
general well-being; it increases, in a certain measure, 
the average of wages and of incomes, but it favors in 
a far larger measure the centralization of fortunes to 
the profit of the great capitalists; the nineteenth cen- 
tury has not only been the centurj^ of the workers, 
it will also be known as the century of the milliard- 
aires.* 

As for the cor^Dorations, they permit, it is true, the 
creation of great enterprises by the accumulation of 
small sums, but, far from favoring the breaking up 
of fortunes already concentrated, they tend on the 
contrary to increase the concentration still more. 
Thanks to their mechanism, thousands of small own- 
ers can invest in the Panama canal or the Transvaal 
gold mines; but who would dare conclude that these 
drains on small savings result in distributing for- 
tunes more equally? Is it not evident, on the con- 
trary, that the small fry of stock and bondholders, 
betrayed by their inexperience into every snare, and 
often interested in one single enterprise, assume much 
greater risks than the magnates of capitalism, who 
reserve to themselves the best morsels— the lion's 
share— and who always take care, for the sake of 
neutralizing unfavorable chances, not to put all their 
eggs in one basket. 

The increase in the number of stockholders does 
not then prove the increase in the number of the pos- 
sessing classes, and still less the breaking up of large 
fortunes, it only means that more and more the cor- 
porate form is becoming the dominant form of prop- 
ertv.** 



♦This word stands for the possessor of 1,000,000,000 francs, 
not quite ^200,000,000.— Translator. 

**In England, for example, the number of jolnl; stock com- 
panies rose from 9,344 in 1885 to 25,267 in 1898. Now, accord- 



76 COLLLCnVlS.M AND 1N1)U>TRIAL EVOLUTION. 

At ilu* point of depart uiv we timl peasant proprie* 
torship, the most typical form of personal property, 
wedding the man to the earth, rooting the cultivator, 
so to speak, in the nourishing soil; at the terminus of 
capitalist evolution, we come to property in the piece 
of paper which confers upon its holder an impersonal 
ri;<ht. which he shares with thousands of others, over 
the railroads of China, the rubber forests of the 
Ton^o, or the mineral wealth of the Klondike. 

And it is precisely to this depersonalization of cap- 
italist property, freed from all connection with the 
actual labor of the possessor, that A. Menger attrib- 
utes a decisive revolutionary tendency: "The more the 
disproportion increases between legal title and real 
lK)wer," he says, "the more complete the change from 
moderate and small property to large property and 
from the latter into mere possession of titles, the 
weaker grows the inner structure of the whole sys- 
tem of private titles. In this increasing separation 
between legal title and physical strength, which Is 
certainly one of the characteristic traits of our epoch. 
1 see the most important factor which is pushing our 
system of private titles into socialism. This juridical 
fact is more important than the economic concentra- 
tion of the means of production into a small number 
of hands upon which Marx and other socialists prin- 
cilKilly insist." 

3. The Numerical Increase of Small Enterprises. 
In his Avork on "Theoretic Socialism and Social-Dem- 
ocratic Practice," E. Bernstein undertakes, and not 
without reason, to dissii)ate the rather naive illusions 
of certain socialists as to the rapidity and the degree 
of advancement of industrial concentration. "If the 

Idk to Kershaw. "Jolut Stock Kuterprlse and our Mauufao- 
tiirlng Industries." scarcely 10 per cent of these new cor- 
poral Ions rrprrsent new enterprises; the rest proceed from 

ih mv.Tsion (if private into corporate forms. (The Fort- 

uighlly Keview, May, IIHKJ, p. SIG.) 



OBJECTIONS. 77 

incessant progress of technique and of centralization," 
he says, "in an ever increasing number of industries, 
is a fact whose significance is in our days passed 
over in silence by none except reactionary impeni- 
tents. it is no less true that in a whole series of indus- 
tries, by the side of the great enterprises, others, of 
small or moderate extent, are showing an undeniable 
vitality."* 

We have seen that too often this vitality proceeds 
from the over-exploitation of the small farmers or 
home workers. But if we keep to statistics pure and 
simple, there is no doubt that Bernstein, figures in 
hand, makes his point. 

In most brajiches of commerce, in spite of the great 
stores, the number of little shops goes on ever increas- 
ing. In many farming regions, if the culture is grow- 
ing more intensive and consequently requires more 
capital, the extent of the holdings is growing smaller 
rather than larger. Finally, in manufacturing, the 
smallest enterprises alone are diminishing, relatively 
and absolutely; as for the enterprises of small to 
moderate extent, their number continues to grow, 
less rapidly however than that of the great enter- 
prises. 

To sum up then, while the number of small enter- 
prises is limited in certain localities or certain 
branches, by reason of capitalist concentration, it is 
increasing, to an extent that often balances the de- 
crease, in other localities or other branches, by reason 
of the progressive division of social labor. 

I.— Commercial Enterprises. We know, to begin 
with, that it is the very progress of large-scale indus- 
try which multiplies commercial enterprises, whether 
by swelling the sum total of exchanges, or by driving 
into retail trade the independent producers who fall 



♦German edition, p. 57; French translation, p. 100. 



78 COLLECTIVISM AND INHUSTK. >i. . . . < '1 A'TION. 

by tilt' way. or liually by ibr fiict that thousands of 
workin^Miu'ii iry to h(»lp out their scanty incomes by 
buildin^r up a supph^inentnry hnsin(»ss,— openini? a 
liipior sh()i>, I'or instance. 

To industrial centralization corresponds (until the 
intro<lucti<»n of the ^reat department ston»s, p^norally 
slower in coming) a pt'riod of commercial decentrali- 
zation. r»ur as a j^eneral rule, the countless middle- 
nirn. \\ ho produci' no surplus- value and contribute so 
lar;j:cly toward swelling the i>rice of j;oods, are at 
bottom nothing but outside agents whose duty is to 
distribute the products of capitalist industry. 

II.— Agricultural Enterprises. The reaction of capi- 
talism upon agriculture. ])y increasing the industrial 
and coinmi»rcial jjopulatioii of the country districts, 
favors the parcelling out of farms, which permits the 
raising of rents, and the multiplication of market 
gardens furnishing beans or potatoes for the tables 
of working people. 

On th<^ othi^r hand, wc have studied elsewhere.* and 
Kautsky explains in a masterly fashion in one of the 
chapters of his book on the agrarian iiuestion**; the 
economic and technical >causes which obstruct at 
present the progress of cultivation on a large scale: 
scarcity and dearness of day labor, attracted more 
and more by tlu^ cities and industrial centers; the 
operation of fctrciLrn competition, more menacing to 
the large farmers producing mostly (exchange values 
than to the small farmers, producing use values in 
great part: aliui^st entire al^sence of interest for the 
tenant in making improvt'ments which would re- 



•L«- Sociallsmo en BolgiqiU'. ]<[\. 41<; ami fol. 

♦♦Kautsky. Die A>:rarfra^i>. chap. VII. Ser also the com- 
paratlvo advantages of cultivation on u .<<mall. me(Jiuni-slze<l 
and largo scalo In Sonibart. Xorglrichuug dcs Gross-. MUtel- 
nnd Kloingrnndbosiizcs niit Hozug auf ihrc wlrthsohaftlichp 
I.cjsfungsfaohlgkolt. (Scpnrato copy from tho Zeitzschrtft 
di r Landwirthschaftskamracr fuer die Provlnz Schleslen.) 



OBJECTIONS. 79 

(lound to the profit of the landlord and might even 
show themselves, in the last analysis, by an increase 
of rent, etc. In spite of all these obstacles, more- 
over, it is shown that in certain countries, like Bel- 
gium, where the development of capitalism had at 
first produced the contrary phenomenon, the number 
of the large farms is increasing, while that of the 
small is declining. 

The statistical annual of Belgium for 1900 treats 
this point as follows: It is exclusively the farms of 
less than 5 hectares (12.36 acres) and notably those 
of less than 2 hectares (4.94 acres) the number of 
which has diminished (84,509). On the contrary, the 
farms in excess of 10 hectares (24.71 acres) and espe- 
cially those in excess of 50 hectares, have increased 
by 3,789. The concentration of landed property, which 
corresponds to the development of large-scale farm- 
ing and stocli-raising, betrays itself here very clearly-. 
It has produced since 1880 a movement inverse to 
that which had been shown from 1866 to 1880, when 
the number of small holdings had considerably in- 
creased, while that of the large holdings had greatly 
diminished. At present, it is the small rural proprie- 
torship which is being effaced by large-scale farm- 
ing.*'* 

Certainly, we do not claim that this concentration 
of farms is a general phenomenon. The agricultural 
statistics of Germany, for example, give results dia- 
metrically oi^posite.** But we have seen that in all 
countries, even where the number of small farms is 
increasing, the number of independent small farmers, 
of peasant proprietors of the soil, is constantly being 
reduced. 

III.— Industrial Enterprises. Industrial concentra- 



♦Introduction, p. XLI. (B-nxelles, 1900=) 
**Hertz. Die agrarischen Fragen im Verhaeltniss zum So- 
cialismus, Vienna, IS'JQ, pp. 53 and fol. 



So ( oLI.KrTniSM AND INnrSTRIAL INVOLUTION. 

tioii, rxiMiuliiiL; \hr small producers from the funda 
menial branches of production, drives Uicni back to 
or coulincs them in the industries of a h)cal, special, 
artistic or luxurious character which does not, at 
least for the time being, lend itself to the division of 
labor, the introduction of machinery and the co- 
operation of workers. But on the other hand ii can 
not be doubted that the develoi)ment of capitalism 
tends to increase the number of these industries and 
the number of enterprises embraced in them. 

In the country districts, to begin with, in propor- 
tion as the production of use values for domestic 
needs gives way to the production of exchange val- 
ues, the small producers working at their trades for 
the l(Kal market necessarily become more numer- 
ous. 

In the second place, wliile the lar.LTt* industries are 
concentrating, the specialization of labor constantly 
begets new industries, branches proceeding from the 
parent stem of production. Thus, for example, in 
the last industrial census of Hainaut,* we tind by the 
side of glass-working, metal-w^orking and the coal in- 
dustry, many ultra-special trades of recent formation, 
such as the manufacture of kindling from chopped 
straw, of shoe-strings, of leather hats for miners, of 
rosaries, of confetti, of wooden soles for over-shoes, 
of filtering cloths, etc., etc. Now, many of these in- 
dustries, by reason of their special or novel character, 
have not yet passed the first phases of their evolution, 
and swell by so much the number of the small pro- 
ducers. 

Finally, the enrichment of the capitalist class, ex- 
IxMiding unproductively a largt^ \n\vt of its profits, 
favors the development of the trades of art and 



♦Oneral census of Indnstiics and trades, October 31. 1s^m>. 
<;ropraphIcal division of industries and trades, i'rovince of 
Hainaut. (Brussels, Hayi-z, ISMI.) 



OBJECTIONS. 8» 

Inxury, of the industries of every kind thr.t produce 
tne superfluity of a minority, while a great part of 
the population is suffering for necessities. Now al- 
most all these articles are made, at least tc begiq 
with, by hand-workers, either at home, or In small or 
moderate sized workshops. 

In short, vre find that in all spheres of social ac- 
tivity, the concentration and automatization which 
operate in certain branches, do not prevent, and often' 
even favor, the incessant formation of new enter- 
prises, employing a limited number of laborers.* 

Only, therp exists between these small enterprises 
of modern creation, and the small enterprises of the 
ancient type, the same difference as that between the 
branches that crown the trees of a forest and those 
wnich form the brush-wood of a thicket. 

The former borrow all their vitality, all their con 
ditions of existence, from the great tree of capitalistic 
production, it gives them life and on it they abso- 
lutely depend.** 

The others, on the contrary, are struggling for life 
against the giant, whose devouring roots and mighty 
foliage deprive them of the nourishing juices of tha 
earth _and the life-giving light of the sun; they pre- 
serve their independence, but they vegetate and grow 
pale, till their time comes to disappear entirely. 

4. Summary and Conclusions. 

What is worth remembering in the objections we 

*0n tne causes tenrling to maintain production on a small 
scale in certain branches of industries, see Gonner. The sui'- 
vlval of domestic industries (in the Economic Journal, March, 
1893). Kovalewsky. Le regime economique de la Kussie, 
Chap. Y. Industry on a large scale and domestic industry. 
Paris, Giard and Briere, 1898^ 

*-Kovale^sky. Ibid., p. 173: "It is a characteristic par- 
ticularly belonging to our small industries, which the Rus- 
sians call 'koustarnaia promyschienost," in comparing them 
to a small tree, that they are not only the outcome of the 
i-atural development of home industry, but also a conse- 
quence of the great capitalist industries." 



82 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRLVL EVOLUTION. 

have just ivvk'wed is iliat i-apiialist coiKciitratiou, re- 
sult iii;^' from the supt'riijr productivity of lalior in 
rouiniun. is not coining about with so much swift- 
ness and simplicity as one nu;:ht sui>pc»se if he con- 
fined his attention to tlie i)rincipal industries. 

Suri'ly it is l>eyond doubt that as a j^eneral ruh^ 
pi'oductioii for doiiiesiic needs tends to be mini- 
mized, tlie handici-aft to clian;:e into a factory, and 
the collective factory into a concentrated factory. 
But from the fact that lar^e-scale mechanical pro- 
duction is incontestably gaining ground in spite of 
all the resistance opposed to its extension, it does 
not necessarily follow that, if we consider the sum 
total of the industries of a country, the home workers 
and the small independent producers are becoming 
less numerous. 

It may liai»i)cn. and it does liapiH'U, while machine 
industry gains in certain branches at the expense of 
home industry, that in other branches the latter more 
than makes up its losses by recruiting laborers 
among the vancpiished artisans and the country peo- 
ple. 

It may also happen, and it does happen, while in 
certain regions the factory industry, concentrated or 
(•(dlective, absorbs or subjugates the independent pro- 
ducers, incapable of resisting it. that in other regions 
less advanced, the industry of the craftsman is de- 
veloping at the expense of production for household 
needs, the domain of which is constantly contracted. 

And it is precisely this irreversible decline of the 
isolated domestic economy, living for itself and by 
itself, which gives us the key to the apparent con- 
tradiction between the tabular results of statistics 
and the undeniable fact of the expropriation of small 
producers by large ones: in spite of industrial con- 
centration, the number of home workers, sometimes 
even (»f artisans, may go on increasing, because the 



OBJECTIONS. 83 

numl3er of tasks carried on at the fireside by mejn- 
l)ers of the family goes on always diminishing. 

But, however it be, in proportion as the family econ- 
omy gives place to the economy of exchange and as 
the specialization of tasks multiplies the relations 
between producers, the political and social dominion 
of large-scale commerce and industry is strengthened 
more and more. 

What matters, indeed, the greater or less number 
of individual enterprises in local or incidental trades 
in new or special industries, from the moment when 
capitalism controls the essential organs of produc- 
tion or exchange? 

What power have the small farmers, the retailers, 
the little employers in industries of art or luxury, 
when they face the all-powerful coalitions of great 
enterprises which govern the banks, affect transpor- 
tations, vrork the mines, utilize the greater part of the 
farm products, produce or distribute all the articles 
of current consumption and develop more and more 
the division and the co-ordination of social labor? 

Even when the old forms persist, the independent 
producers are becoming interdependent producers. 
Directfy or indirectly, all are co-operating in a com- 
mon work; and it is chiefiy to this national and inter- 
national co-operation that we must attribute the for- 
midable expansion of productive forces since the be- 
ginning of the capitalist era. 

Only, in such an association, forced, mechanical, 
and, oftener than not. unconscious, the great major- 
ity of the co-operators have no interest in increasing 
the social product. The directing functions belong, 
sometimes by right of conquest, oftenest by right of 
birth, to the one class of proprietors. The co-ordina- 
tion of efforts remains absolutely imperfect. The 
bitterness of competition opposes a permanent ob- 
stacle to the reign of solidarity among men and na- 



84 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

fious. ITn' inferior forms of production and exchange 
perpetuaie thenisolves. the more persistent as they 
are more abjeet. T'h«' number of parasites, of the 
voUintarily or involuntarily unemployed j^oes on ever 
inereasin^^ and the very progri'ss of capitalism (see 
the tirst pa^^es of the Communist Manifesto) brings 
into ever stronger relief its inherent and umlerlying 
contradictions. 

The increasing socialization (jf production increases 
the product of labor, but suppresses the advantages 
and develops the inconveniences of individual prop- 
erty by multiplying the laborers without capital and 
the capitalists without labor. 

The development of commerce, the free exchange of 
ideas, of men, and of products, even the general re- 
quirement of military services render war more diffi- 
cult, and on the other hand the maladjustment of 
production and consumption, the feverish quest for 
new markets, the conquest of the colonial world, that 
future state of bourgeois societies.— all these multiply 
the causes of conflicts, intensify the burdens of armed 
peace, of un-mo])ilized war, of war with shots of gold- 
pieces, as Bismarck said, and und»'r the distressing 
menace of a general conflagration, perpetuate the hor- 
rors of open war, all around the civilized world. 

Finally, while the tendency to reduce wages to a 
minimum, to prolong the work-day to extreme limits," 
to replace the workman by the machine, the adult 
man by his wife and children, in order to increase 
profit unendingly, remains the dominant, inevitable 
concern of capitalist production, it begets at the same 
time, digging its own tomb, th(* revolutionary forces 
which are organizing, becoming conscious of their 
means and of their end. and from now on are build- 
ing up, within the entrails of modern society the 
mighty embryo of the society of collectivism! 



PART II. 

THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE MEANS OP PRO- 
DUCTION AND EXCHANGE. 

^'Wealth, social in its origin, should be social in its 

use/' 

—Pierre Lafitte. 

The fundamental viciousness of the capitalist sys- 
t-em, not only from the point of view of distribution, 
but, by a perfectly natural reaction, from the point of 
view even of the social productivity of labor, is the 
confiscation by the possessing classes of the surplus- 
value produced by the wage- working classes. 

Certainly it would be a false conception, and one 
falsely attributed to socialists,* to consider manual 
labor alone as productive, and consequently to see 
nothing but an illicit spoliation in all forms of in- 
come which do not constitute wages in the strict sense 
of the term. 

It is very evi,dent, on the contrary, that all those 
who render some useful service, all those who really 
take part in social labor, from engineers and mana- 
gers of industry to the scientists and artists who 
contribute a needful complement to the sum total 
of production,— all these ought in justice to receive 

♦See especially what Marx says on the subject of labor of 
superintendence, in chapter XXITI. of the third volurae of 
"Capital." W^hen a capitalist himself directs his enterprise, 
he produces surplus value, not because he works as a capital- 
ist, but because he worlvs ninto apart from his function as 
a capitalist. This portion of surplus value is then not really 
surplus-value, but its opposite, the equivalent of work per- 
formed." (Das Kapital, UT., pp. .3^8, ^eiy— and far.ther on, 
p. 378, "Fre has already made the remark tliat it i*^ not 
the industrial capitalists but rather the industrial managers 
who are the soul of our system of industry." 



86 COLLKCTIVIS.M AND INDUSTRIAL hVULUTION. 

a wa^a* aud lake ilu'ir shaiv uf the prudiu-i they ht^lp 
tu create. 

It is possible to justify in this way, iu our presout 
societ}'. the uuearued iucomes which j^ive leisure to 
the poet, the philosopher aud the iuveutor.* But, 
even wheu you add these incomes, juslitied as they 
are by gratuitous labor, to the sum of the incomes 
of work that is paid, if you consi(U*r as a just wage 
all the salaries, all the i)rotits, all the remuneration 
under any form whatever, accorded to all the ijroduc- 
ers, u.rect or indirect, material or immaterial, there 
remains none the less an excess, an over-product, a 
surplus value, which the dilTerent groups of capital- 
ists, industrial, commercial, landed, divide among 
themselves, not by virtue of labor of any kind at all, 
but only, like the lion in the fable, by virtue of their 
right of property over the means of production and 
exchange. 

Such is the essential fact which underlies all the 
socialist demands. It appears more or less clearly 
to any one who takes the trouble to reflect, and the 
scientitic analyses which Marx, utilizing the labors of 
his predecessors, co-ordinated and unitied in his mas- 
terly work, have really only given the scientitic for- 
mula of the exploitation of the proletariat by the hold- 
ers of private capital. 

This exploitation is undenia])le, since there are pi^o- 
ple who. not living by their own la])or, must neces- 
sarily live at the expense of the labor of some one 
else. But that does not mean, and the socialists have 
never asserted, that in every enterprise the suri)lus- 
value created by labor goes dirtu'tly, by some sort of 
automatic process to the individual capitalist. 

To see things in their true light, it is necessary to 

•S»M' on this siibjt'ct tile study by A. Koiiillee, in the Kevut* 
des Deux Mondes of May 1. llKiu. un "Mental Labor and Ma- 
terialistic Collectivism."" 



SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION. 87 

consider them in tlieir relations with each other. And 
this is what Marx does when he shows how surplus- 
value created during the process of production trans- 
forms itself into average profit.* 

Apart from certain exceptional cases, he says in 
substance, the capitalists do not realize, at the time 
goods are sold, the surplus-value created in their 
sphere of production. This surplus-value loses 
itself in the mass of surplus-value produced 
by the sum total of social labor, and, transformed 
into average profit, tends to be divided on an equal 
footing among all equally important fractions of cap- 
ital engaged. The capitalists, taken together, should 
therefore be considered, where profit is concerned, 
as the stockholders of a vast impersonal corporation, 
who divide among themselves the benefits derived 
from it, pro rata to the number of their shares. 

Also, as the capitalistic dominion over production 
becomes stronger, and as forms of property become 
mobile and transform themselves into values that 
are easily negotiable, the more also do profits tend 
to equalize themselves in all branches,— leaving out 
of account, naturally, the diversity of risks, the in- 
fluence of monopolies and the fluctuations of the mar- 
ket; In fact, from the moment when in a durable 
way, the profits in one of the spheres of production 
or exchange exceed the average, capital flows into 
it, and— following the laws of supply and demand— 
this competition lowers the profits. On the contrary, 
if these remain in a durable way, below the average, 
capital withdraws from this to other branches, and 
consequently the profits rise. 



♦Das Kapital. III. 1. Der Gesammt-process der kapitalistls- 
chen Production. Sec. I.. 119 (Hamburg. Otto Meissner. 1894). 
We have summarized this p'irt of >'ol. III., which has not 
been translated yet. in the "Annals de rinstitut des s.clences 
?0(i-iles." April. 1S97, No. 2. 3d year, (Brussels, at the 
Institnre. No. 11. rue Ravensrein.) 



88 COLLLCnVlSM AND INDUSTRIAL hVOLUllON. 

It ^lAs williuuf sayiii.L; llmi in spiir ol" ihis leu- 
(U'liry to ^'V^liu;5^ which iiuhn-d is <)i)p(is«'(l by many 
(•hsiacK's. the protits realized by each (aU('q)risc» cdii- 
sidcrcd scparah'ly rmiaiii csM-ntially varialjh-: ihi-y 
may rt-acii laiKasiic Ii;;ui'i's i-r l>r reduced to iioth- 
iii;:; iM'iiiaiis they may i-vm laU beluw zero. liui 
\\ lialever be the imporiauee of these neciih'Uts, hai)i)y 
or uidiappy, for those who are their beueliciaries or 
vietiins, it remaius no less true that the capitalist 
class, taken as a whole, by the single I'acl of its 
owuim; !hi' means of i)roduction and exchange, seizes 
and divides, iHuhr I hi' form of profit, the surplus- 
value creait'd l)y the manual or inU'lieriuai iaboi'- 
ers. 

Efforts are indeed made lo jusiily this seizure, 
which tai^cs away from the great mass of the toiU'rs 
ail diicci intcrt'si in increasing the productivity of 
social labor. ]>y maintaining that the prolits of the 
c*apitalist class constitute the motive of production, 
the just and necessary reward of the capital it sup- 
plies and the function it fullils in taking up the direc- 
tion of enterprises. 

We must then sum up in its strongi'r outlines the 
axgument of those who urge this view. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE THREE ELEMENTS OF PROFIT. 

Ich liege und besitze, 
Lass' micli sclafen! 
(I rest and possess, let me sleep.) 

—Richard Wagner. 

In any enterprise whatever, the profit of a manu- 
facturer, when he is at the same time capitalist and 
proprietor of the funds which he employs, equals the 
selling price of the products less the cost of produc- 
tion. 

Supposing, for example, that in a cotton-spinning 
factory, to manufacture 10,000 pounds of thread, 
which sold, in No. 40 (June, 1900) at 10,750 francs, the 
manufacturer expends 1,300 francs for the pay of his 
employees, 6,750 francs for the purchase of his raw 
material (cotton), 250 francs for auxiliary materials 
(coal, lighting gas, etc.), 650 francs for the renewal 
of his fixed plant, his material and other expenses, 
say, in all 8,950 francs which represent his expenses 
of production, the profit which he realizes is equal 
to 10,750—8,950, say, 1,800 francs. 

To justify this profit, each of the three elements 
composing it has successively been insisted upon 
more particularly. 

1. The reward of the labor of the manufacturer. 

2. The interest on the capital employed (including 
the ground rent, if the manager of the enterprise is 
at the same time proprietor of the real estate). 

3. The cost of insurance against risks. 

Or, in other terms, which we find in certain econo- 



Cjo COLLECTIVISM AND INDL'S TRIAL LVOLUTION. 

iiiisis. who air anxious to trausfunii tlu' capitalists 
into Nva;^^e- workers in the hope of avoidin;^ tlii» traus- 
forniation ot* wa^'e- workers by eoUective appropria- 
tion into eai)italists,— wages of insurance, wages of 
ahstainence and wap:es of superintendence. 

1. Wages of Insurance. 

It is assunii'd. ai ilir s:arl. liiat tiie extra profits 
realized by ceriain capitalists constitute an indemnity 
U)V the risks that they assume. "Experience proves," 
says Leroy lieaulieu. 'that out of ten who end)ark 
in manufacture or commerce, there are two or three 
will) fail toi.illy. tiv" or six who merely find a liveli- 
hood as the UKMiest reward of their labor, mean- 
while simi)ly preservin?^ their property or increas- 
iiiLT it only v(M'y sliprhtly, and at the most one or 
i\\'(» who acMuire a fortune of some importance."* 

If then there are some wlu) .irain nuich,and who even 
seem to ^^ain too muc-h, it must not be forsrotten that 
many others are losing-. Here, for exainpfe, are the 
liLMi res for 2,004 (Jerman corporations, tabulated by 
X'dw (Ur Borght for 1801-1892: 

471 liciuidated with deficits. 

88S declared no dividends. 

r»41 declared from to 5 per cent. 

734 declared from o to 10 per cent. 

14!» declared from 10 to 15 per cent. 
04 declared from lo to 20 per cent. 
39 declared from 20 to 30 per cent. 
18 declared from 30 to 40 per cent. 
21 declared more than 40 per cent. . 

In the last class ar<' the Arenberix Coal Company 
(Essen), 80 per cent: the (Toettingi^n Sugar Company, 
83VL> por cent: the Marine and Kiver Transportation 
of l)r(»sden. 1(»0 jmt c(Mit. and the I'pp(»r Silesia Com- 

♦Trr.iif d'ccuiioiiilt' puli'ilqiic, II., p. 207. 



I Hi-: iHKKK L.LEMENTS OF PROFIT. 9I 

pany for the manufacture of wood pulp, 120 per cent. 

To sum up, then, the justification offered for the 
enormous i>i^ofits of certain capitalists is that they 
are balanced by the failure or the bankruptcy of their 
unhappy competitors. But that very thing condemns 
in our ej'es a S3'stem of social non-solidarity, which 
secures exorbitant benefits to some and exposes all 
to the risks of competition, fluctuations of value and 
speculation.— not only the chiefs of industries, more 
or less responsible for their acts, but also the laborers, 
employed by them. 

That in the present state of things, profits must 
necessarily include an element of insurance against 
risk, we do not dream of denying. Only, we main- 
tain, and it is easy to show, that in a social organiza- 
tion of labor, this element of insurance would lose all 
reason for existence. 

From now on, indeed, if such or such a particular 
enterprise does run the risk of destruction, it is very 
rarely that a whole industry does not make profits, 
and unless there be a veritable cataclysm, it is safe 
to say that the capitalists as a class are nev^r in 
peril. 

At the time of the social investigation, 1891-1892, 
the 2,254 companies as to which Van der Borght was 
able to secure exact and complete information real- 
ized, in spite of the losses experienced by a large 
enough proportion of them, an average profit of 8.8 
per cent on their nominal capital and distributed 6.1 
per cent in dividends. 

Analogous results are obtained for the commercial 
corporations whose losses or profits are published each 
year by the Annuaire Official of Belgium.* 



*In 1898 the commpTcial ptock comDanies, orgranlzerl nnrlf^r 
the law of May 18. 1873, had a Ptnterl capital of 2.045,722 000 
francs. The net profits realized bv 948 of them amounted to 
197,041,000 francs, the losses suffered by 112 of them to 



92 COLLKCTIVISM AND INblSTRlAL EVOLUflON 

We iiiny ilicii Justly concludo ilint takini; one yoar 
with aiioiIuT. ilic proprietors of Ww iiieaus of produc- 
tion and exchau;<e divide anions themselves a mass 
of prolits, of transformed siiri)liis-valiie. variable in 
amount, hut, for the sum total of enterprises, never 
falling to zero. 

2. "Wages of Abstinence. 

As a second element incorporated in protit, we tind 
the interest on the capital employed. 

From the moment when this capital belongs to 
private individuals, it is perfectly natural that these 
should exact a remiuieration before they part with it 
and ijlace it at the disposal of the workers: whoever 
concedes the private appropriation of the means of 
production ought to accept its conseciuences. 

But theorists go farther, and maintain that this 
remuneration constitutes the only really effective way 
of assuring the performance of this essential func- 
tion; the accumulation by savin;;- of the capital nec- 
essary for production. 

**Ky the side of the wage-worker, who receives what 
is his right," wrote^ Fan 'her, a disciple of Schulze- 
Delitsch, "there is another factor which is eiiually 
within its right: namely, interest on capital; this in- 
terest is neither more nor less than wages for ab- 
stinence exercised. Whoever accumulates capital, 
imposes privations upon himself, he does not exp(»nd 
the means he has acquired, but he accuinulati's them 
in the shape of improved tools, provisions, etc. He 
thus arrives at the possession of capital useful to 
the community: in yielding up his savings, the fruit 

3,n04. (!()() francs; showing an excess of protlts over l<»s- s 
of •iy;i,04T,(AiO francs, that is to say, \)A per cent of the 
iKiiiiIiial capital, generally (•vcrvaliud.— Hegaiilinp the serl<»U9 
disadvania;:*'^ i;f (tvercapiinlization. In most inipj-rsnnal cor- 
porations, see KiTshaw: .Joint Stork Enterprise anil Our 
Manufacturing Imlusirles. (The Fortnightly R»'View, May 
luoe.) 



THE THREE ELEMENTS OF PROFIT 93 

of his moderation, be deserves a reward, which he 
receives by the payment of his interest, for his ab- 
stinence is worth as much as and often more than 
labor itself. That is why it is not possible that the 
wages of labor be raised at the expense of the wages 
of abstinence."* 

Lassalle, in his celebrated pamphlet against Schulze- 
Delitsch, had a good deal of fun at the expense of 
these poor capitalists, ascetics, Hindoo penitents and 
followers of Srylites, standing with one foot on a 
pillar, with pale visage, their arms and body bent 
forward, reaching out a plate to the people to gather 
in the wage of their privations. 

And even in England, where since the time of 
Senior the "remuneration for abstinence" theory had 
been in favor, economists like Sidgwick recognize to- 
day that the socialist critic has done justice to this 
pretended justification of incomes without labor. 

"As things are," says Sidgwick, ''the laborer's share 
of consumable commodities is less than it would be 
if his labor could be equally effective without instru- 
ments, because he has to devote a part of it to the 
making of instruments; and it is. further, less than 
it would otherwise be, because he has to devote an- 
other part of it to the making of the commodities on 
which the owner of capital spends that part of his 
interest which he does not save." 

Now only the former of these subtractions would 
take place in a socialist regime: the collectivity would 
need to exercise abstinence and devote a part of its 
product to the maintenance and renewal of the social 
capital: but it would not have to pay an additional 
sum to reward the exercise of this abstinence, to 



*Cited by Lassalle. Capital et Travail, Frencb translation 
of Malon. p. 143. See also Fouillee, Le travail mental et le 
coiTpctiTismp materialiste CRevue des Deux-Mondes, May 1, 
1900, p. 129.) 



94 'OLLKCTIVISM AND lNI>rSTRIAL KVOLUTION. 

>iiijiuIalo the capitalists to save rather than to con- 
sviiiie. 

I liat is, moreovor, what is happening even now, in 
r:)-uperative companies and public services, with that 
portion of their capital which is not borrowed. The 
company, the Siate or the municipality deduct out of 
the prolits of the enterprise or out of the assessments 
<^r the taxes paid by their membeis, what is neces- 
sary for the development of the equipment and for 
the progress of the enterprise. In short, saving be- 
comes collective, instead of being individual. It is 
a social function, exercised by all in the interest of 
all, instead of being handed over as to-day to the 
initiative of private interest, to the free fancy of cap- 
italists, wavering incessantly between the desire of 
increasing their incomes and the desire of adding to 
their expenditures. 

For let us not forget that it is with an enormous 
waste of strength and of wealth that the possessing 
class exercises the capitalistic function which has 
devolved upon it in the present state of things. As 
an offset to what it accumulates productively, to in- 
tensify the exploitation of labor, we must place what 
it expends unproductivoly, and almost always stupid- 
ly, vainly and immorally, to display a luxury of pure 
ostentation, to pay the thousands of workers whom 
that luxury requires, and whom Fourier justly called 
"agents of negative creation," and finally to maintain 
those legions of inferior parasites, valets, jockeys, 
hair-dressers, gamblers, actors of a certain class and 
prostitutes, who swarm like maggots in the capitalist 
dung-heap. 

And this does not count the standing armies,— in- 
dispensable for defending the wage-receivers of ab- 
stinence against those whom necessity condemns to 
pay their wages. 



THE THREE ELEMENTS OF PROFIT. 99 

3. "Wages of Superintendence. 

It is especially this last element that is insisted on 
to-day to justify the profits of the chiefs of enterprise. 
There is in profits, and especially in the great profits 
of a capitalist, exclaims Leroy-Beaulieu, something 
more than the interest on his capital, the insurance 
on his risks and even the simple wage of superin- 
tendence, the salary which is paid to a superintendent 
or an officer. The source, the true source of great 
industrial profits is the superiority of the combina- 
tions and the greater or less skill, ability and tact of 
the captains of industry. "It matters little whether 
the capitalist has combined these qualities in him- 
self, or whether he has been enabled by the efiiciency 
of his mind or the quickness of his conception- or has 
dared by a natural hardihood— to apply the happy 
combinations of others. Into the essential functions 
of the capitalist (entrepreneur) enter the choice not 
only of materials, of innovations, of machines and of 
workmen, but of all his employes and assistants. His 
part is to set at work human faculties as well as 
brute forces. He need not be personally an engineer, 
an inventor; what is needed is that either by him- 
self or by the men whom he enlists, he should be able 
to give to production at each instant the most efB- 
oient organization; he must needs have the gift of 
fruitful adaptation."* 

It could hardly be said more clearly that the extra 
profits of the capitalist are derived more than any- 
thing else from his superior skill in the art of ex- 
ploiting other people's labor. 

Small matter if the genius of inventors ripen on 
beds of straw, if the educated proletariat cry out 
for hunger, if the manual laborers sell the strength 
of their arms for wages reduced to the minimum: 



♦Leroy-Beaulieu: Traite rEconomie Politique, II., p. 196, 



96 COI.LFXTIVISM AND INIHSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

the large prolits are iiuiie lb(^ loss the le^jritiruate re- 
ward (»1* the iiii^i'iiiuiis a(lai)ier. who proliis by his 
(•ai)iialistie iiiunui»uly to hirr tlieiii, enroll them and 
scjiieeze tln'iu. 

Some perhaps may lind this thesis excessive. But 
^^•llat is especially strikiiiL: iu this argiiuient is the 
small importance attached to this essential lact: the 
invasitjn of all great industries by the impersonal com- 
pany, the rej^lacing ol* active capitalists l)y salaried 
managers. 

Ot course, we understand that, leaving to the social- 
ist blasphemers the task ol bringing to light the bad 
sides of capitalism, such authors praise the skill, the 
feverish activity, the organizing faculty, the frenzy 
for work which the founder of an enterprise must 
have in order to triumph over his competitors. But 
what meaning has this jianegyric, when the (juestion 
turns on ])assive capitalists, bondholders or stockhold- 
ers in <(tri)( ►rations, who delegate their powers to an 
active superintendent'/ Is it not evident that in such 
a case — and what was formerly the exception tends 
to become the ruh*— it is altogether impossible to jus- 
tify profits by claiming that they correspond to a 
labor of superintendence? 

This is very well shown by ^^^'lxweiler. answering 
che question of ascertaining what becomes of the 
protit, in impersonal corporations. '*It is," he says, 
**after deduction of the reserve, divided among the 
stockholders, that is to say that it goes precisely to 
those factors of production which accomplish not 
one of the multiple active functions of the capitalist; 
all those, iu fact, which assume the various responsi- 
bilities of general administration, of daily manage- 
ment, of technical and commercial direction, of finan- 
cial control, have been rewarded by fixed salaries. 
Even the stockholders are not essentially the holders 
of capital, since half the social possessions belong. 



THE THREE ELEMENTS OF PROFIT. 97 

in the example we have chosen, to bond-holders who 
are remunerated by a fixed interest. Where is there 
the element common to the active capitalist (entre- 
preneur) and to the stockholder, which makes the lat- 
ter heir of the right to profit? It lies, no doubt, in 
the passive role of the entrepreneur which we have 
outlined by saying that he carried the risk of the en- 
terprise. Here stands out the economic function 
which is found to be rewarded by profit: by its true 
name it is called speculation."* 

Thus, under the system of impersonal corporations, 
and apart from the shares accorded to the managing 
staff, every element of labor disappears from profits. 
Individual initiative gives place to a bureaucratic or- 
ganization. The rois faineants** of capitalism aban- 
don the control of their enterprises to mayors of the 
palace. 

We often hear of the manifold ills resulting from 
the absenteeism of landlords in agricultural countries, 
but this absenteeism does not oppress agriculture 
alone, it has become equally the rule in manufactur- 
ing ever since the moment when the rule of the im- 
personal corporation began to be general. 

A great capitalist, for example, who makes invest- 
ments in a whole series of enterprises— to balance his 
risks, by virtue of the law of great numbers— disasso- 
ciates himself almost as completely from these enter- 
prises as from the farms whicn he buys with the same 
view to investment. And in proportion as capitalism 
develops, the absenteeism of the stockholder becomes 
more complete, and the bonds between proprietor 
and property more impersonal and looser. 



*La participation aux benefices, p. 85. (Paris, Rousseau, 
1898.) 

**The name rois faineants (do-nothing" kings) was given to 
tlie hereditary rulers of France in the seventh and eighth 
centuries, who left the actual administration to the "Mayors 
of the Palace."— Translator. 



98 COLLKCTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

"The oUUt ji^eiicration/" as vvlt^ -stated lately by the 
.Monitor* of material interests, 'will still remember 
\hv time when shares in coal mines, even those of 
Ker^itim, were possessed only by inhabitants of Liege 
or the Hennegau. The tirst time that the Flemish 
bouLcht any, there was ^reneral astonishment. Since 
tlien, every one pushes at the wheel, and investments 
in eoal mines, domestic and foreign, are current coin. 
The same thing with exotic values. It is hardly more 
than lifteen years sincr the interior of the country 
adopted (unsuccessruUy moreover) those rents and 
land titles from South America which previously An- 
\»ers alone was acquainted with and dealt in. But, on 
the contrary, Auvers has taken to handling industrial 
shares to which it had previously been indifferent. 
Instead of two markets. An vers and Brussels, with 
distinct and sometimes opposite attractions, there is 
now only one market of Belgian capital.'* 

Thus between the capitalists and the laborers who 
work for them under the orders of a manager, him- 
self on a salary, any collaboration, any co-operation in 
a common work, linally disappears. 

The separation between property and labor is be- 
coming as complete in manufacturing as in agri- 
culture. The stockholder, considered as a stock- 
holder, is no more than one who stakes money, more 
or less skilfully, more or less luckily. The exploita- 
tion of man by man is throwing off all the veils whicli 
covered it wluui the holder of capital was at the 
same time chief of the enterprise; and, like the 
legen<lary dragon, lying on the gold of the Rhine in its- 
deep cavern, passive capitalism lives crouching over 
its wealth, in distant cities, motionless and formida- 
])le, disdainful of rcn'olts and cai-eless of tlif^ miseries 
of an uTiknown ])roletariat: 



♦Li* Moultoiir, a capitalist nr\yspap*T of Bnissols.— Trans- 
lator. 



THE THREE ELEMENTS OF PROFIT. 99 

*'Icb Ueg nnd besitze, 
Lass' mich schlafen!" 

4. Surplus-value and Profit. 

To sum lip, and according to our respective point of 
view, profits appear to us under two very different 
aspects. 

One the one side— after deducting the wages of 
superintendence, of invention, of organization of en- 
terprises, they represent the mass of surplus-value 
which the capitalist class, by virtue of its property 
right, extorts from the manual and intellectual labor- 
ers who find themselves dependent upon it. 

On the other side— looking at their distribution 
among individuals, profits constitute the principal mo- 
tive, not to say the only motive, of capitalistic pro- 
duction. 

It is the prospect of obtaining profits which stimu- 
lates the accumulation of capital, which impels the 
captains of industry to the battle-fields of competition, 
which engenders, in the fever of hazardous and too 
often dishonest speculations— inter stercus et urinam 
nascitur homo— the multiform and magnificent flora 
of enterprises which these last years have seen grow- 
ing up over all the surface of our globe. But, w^hile 
the active capitalists, the men of initiative, the pro- 
moters and managers of enterprises, the modern con- 
quistadores, with an energy which in most cases is 
only equalled by their absence of scruples, are in- 
cessantly creating new enterprises and bringing into 
order the industries of new countries, passive capital- 
ism, that dead weight on modern production, is devel- 
oping equally, and thanks to the mechanism of the 
corporations, which clearly differentiates thQ remun- 
eration of labor, under all its forms, from the profits 
realized passively by the stockholders, it appears from 
all evidence that the profits of these last do not 



lOO COLLPXTIVIS.M AND INI'lslRlAL KVOLUTK )N. 

♦ oFri'spond to :niy ncin.il labor and are nothing: olso 
than the product oT o\\ ni'isliip. tlic result of individual 
property in (•ai)ital. 

Hut, it will doul)ih'ss he said, it would still bo neces- 
sary to establish— ])efore any socialist conclusions are 
justilied- that this same property is not legitimate, 
ir the incliis do n<»i reju'esent any present labor, they 
are the reward of past labor. If there are passive 
eapiialists; prei>rietors who do not work, it is as a 
general rule because they have worked, because* they 
have ac(iuired the right to do nothing by gaining 
their fortune through force of labor and intelligence, 
by dis])laying exceptional qtialities of invention, of 
initiative and of organization. 

There would be many things to take up again in this 
argument. It would be only too easy to show that, 
most of the time the sources of the big fortunes are 
'far from having that crystalline purity. The history 
of proi)erty, landed as well as capitalist, teaches us 
to know many other catises of enrichment, — encroach- 
ments on X\w domain of the State: expropriation, bru- 
tal or fraudulent, of the communes and of peasant 
properties; purchase of confiscated property at cheap 
prices: concessions of mines, railroads, etc., obtained 
fnv a song and oftener than not bought back again 
later, far above their real values; usury: (piestionable 
speculations: hits on the stock exchange; franchise 
grab]>ing: illicit combinations: automatic and sponta- 
neous increase* of landcMl rents, following the develop- 
ment of population and industry; appropriation by the 
capitalists of tin* surplus-value i)rodu<-ed by the labor- 
ers; shameless exi)l()itati(n"i of the genius of inventors, 
obliged to sell their brains that thry may not die of 
hunger. We might prolong this list indefinitely. 

Nevertheless, let us sui)pose it were otherwise. I.(^t 
us admit for a momc^nt. even against thi^ (evidence, 
that all tin* capitalists may bi» sons of their works. 



THE THREE ELEMENTS OF PROFIT. lOI 

that all those works ma^- have been legitimate, that 
all the holders of the means of production may have 
gained their fortunes by the sole power of their per- 
sonal labor: still that would not be a sufficient motive 
for society to confer upon them a perpetual and 
transmissible assignment on the products of the labor 
of others; that would not be a reason why their 
children and their children's children should be from 
generation to generation. 

Heirs, without labor, of fields smoking witti blood of the 
slain I 

Admitting that a life interest in property may be 
legitimate by reason of labor, it is plainly otherwise 
with hereditary property. 

It is claimed, indeed, that the right of inheritance 
is socially indispensable, because it stimulates to labor 
those who dream of enriching their descendants or 
their heirs. 

The argument may be valid, in a measure, so far as 
it deals with heredity in direct line, or even with tes- 
tamentary heredity, which the socialists in general 
propose to limit and not to suppress;* but will any 
one claim that the case is the same when we come 
to collateral inheritance, a last and henceforth an 
unjustifiable survival of the time when "the greatest 
family" was still a reality. And on the other hand, 
is it not almost certain that the fundamental injustice 



♦See, for instance, Colins' La science sociale. V., pp. 320 
and fol.— Schaeffle. The Quintessence of Socialism, p. 47^ 
"Again, the denial of all private and family right of inherit- 
ance is by no means a necessary consequence, or at all an 
essential interest, of socialism. 

"The latter has reason to say to its blustering adherents, 
who wish to abolish the right of inheritance. 'The Lord pre- 
serve me from my friends I'. . . . This right of private in- 
heritance would have in its own nature a limited extent, for 
private superfluities of the means of pleasure, which would 
be the only source of property left at death, would be very 
much contracted, since the wealth in means of enjoyment 
of the private person . . . would in the main fall' away 
. . . with his monopolist sources of rent." 



102 Lul.Ll.i 1I\1>.M AM) INDL.^IKIAL L\()I.l liUXc 

wliirli permits some to make others work instead of 
working themselves, strikes at the produelivity of 
social labor a heavier blow than auy limitations, even 
though excessive, of the rights of bequest and succes- 
sion V 

Thus we are profoundly c(mvinced that tlu- pro- 
ductive power of modern society would be consider- 
ably increased, if the socialization of the principal in- 
dustries suppressed, or reduced in larice measure, the 
unearned incomes derived from capitalist property. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL PROPERTY. 

*'We are all socialists now." 

—Sir William Harcourt. 

When the socialists, basing their position on the 
progress of capitalist concentration, with the conse- 
quences which it involves regarding the exploitation 
of labor, proceed to the socialization of the industries 
already ripe for collectivism, they are only, after all, 
continuing and generalizing tendencies which show 
themselves even in the heart of the present bourgeois 
societies. 

Without speaking of the administration of justice, 
socialized centuries ago, or of the institutions of learn- 
ing which, despite the resistance of the churches, are 
being transformed more and more into public serv- 
ices, it is undeniable that in the economic order, the 
collective domain tends continuously to increase. "The 
taking possession by society," says Hamilton, "is al- 
ready, for one part, so completely realized that the re- 
turn to private initiative would not be considered: 
for example, in the matter of money, posts, high- 
ways, etc. The reasons are easy to understand. The 
more civilization progresses, the more do such insti- 
tutions require to be operated on a large scale and 
with unity and reciprocal cohesion. If they were en- 
trusted to private persons or to associations their ac- 
tion would in all cases have to be brought about by 
a managing staff established in imitation of that of 
the State, and consequently without that spur of per- 
sonal interest, which otherwise constitutes the ad- 



104 CULLEC11V1.-^M AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

v:ini;i>r»' <»r inivau' linxliictiijii. IT a competition ex- 
ists, I lie t'lul is iTarlh'd but iiii-oniplulely aud iu a less 
ecouoinical I'asliiou, as lur exaini^ie iu the case of 
several coiiipetiu;^: railroad <-uinpaLiies. IT. on the 
contrary, this eonipetition does not exist, the public 
suffers iu niauy ways, aud the private interests of the 
possessors make themselves felt in a tyrannical fash- 
ion. As well from the point of view of production as 
from that of distribution, we lind sensible advantages 
in the social oi\uanization of such enterprises."* 

'I'hcsc advanta.ires of oi)cration by the State or by 
oihcr public authorities such as the provinces, or espe- 
cially the uiunicipalilies,* are of a quite various na- 
ture, on the one hand, the profits realized, instead of 
])enelitin.i: stockholders. ai>pear as a reduction in 
taxes; on the other hand, anxiety for the maximum 
profit not existing, or at least not to the same de- 
Lrree as in cai)italistic enterprises (except of course 
in the case of fiscal monopolies.) the administrations 
which regulate the work are more easilj' accessible 
to considerations or suggestions of a social order, 
especially regarding the conditicn of the workers, the 
purchase of raw materials, the cost and the quality 
of the products or services, the interest, iu short, of 
the generations to come. 

1. Th.e Profits of tlie Public Enterprises. 

The socialized industries, aud especially monopolies, 
natural or artificial, may l)e at the start a source of 
revenue for the collectivity which carries them on. 
At Brussels, for example, tlu^ gas works alone give 
an annual profit of nearly .^4(K),(hio. In France the 
tobacco monopoly, whicli puts a price ou this product 



♦Count De Hamilton. Lc devdcippemont iles functions de 
I'Etat, dans Itnirs rapi)()rts avec le droit const itutiouuel. 
(Revue d'Econ«»niie Polititpie. 181)1. pp. 1-10 and fol.) 

♦On the latest proi^n-ss uf "niuulclpal socialism" In Enj^land 
see Hariisuu. Municipal Trading. (.Economic Journal, June, 
liKJU.j 



THE ADVANTAGES OE SOCIAL PROPERTY. 105 

of six times its value, brings into the treasury, taking 
one year with another, more than $00,000,000. 

It goes without saying that these profits are really 
nothing but indirect taxes. The moment that an ad- 
ministration puts out its products at a price above 
cost, the profits which go into the treasury have neces- 
sarily a fiscal character. And in a collectivist so- 
ciety the deductions which the community would 
make, before any individual distribution, to provide 
for the general needs, would be the equivalent of our 
present taxes. But if there are products, like tobacco 
and brandy, which may legitimately be subject to 
taxation, there are others, like water and lighting 
gas, for example, which supply wants of prime neces- 
sity, and ought not to be burdened with any over- 
charge. 

Even now certain local administrators furnish them, 
either at or below cost, or even gratuitously. 

In his book on Socialism in England, Metin cites two 
little towns which give gas to all their inhabitants 
free.* 

At Schaerbeeck, one of the principal suburbs of 
Brussels, the intentional deficit on the water service 
is covered by a special tax proportional to incomes.** 

At Geneva, the city, which since 1896 has under- 
taken the supply of water, gas and electricity, derives 
a slight profit from the lighting and the water ac- 
counts, but on the contrary it distributes strictly at 
cost the hydraulic a.nd the electric power which two 
well equipped plants derive from the waters of the 
Rhone.*** 



*MetJiii; Le Socialisme en Angleterre, p. 226. Paris, Alcau, 
1897.) 

**See report presented to the common council of Schaer- 
beeck by Louis Bertrand, comptroller. 

***Achard, Leg finances et les services industriels de la ville 
de Geneve. (Revue d'Economie Politique, August-September, 
1899.J 



I06 euLLLL,ll\ ISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

Tlu* siiiiH' U'liik'Ucy to tht' sysirinaiic lowering of 
profits is found in most of tlie Eu^lisli niiinicii)iilities, 
and in a ^^encral way it may be said that wlierever 
iln' soeialist spirit develops, the tiseal i^revenue-pro- 
diR-in;:) ebaraeter of the pul)lie enterprises is disap- 
pearing:. No eiiy lias ;:oue so far as (Jlas^ow in the 
way of niiinicipal or;:anizatiou, and no city talces 
hi^'lier ranic in the etliciiaicy ol' its administration and 
the standard ol' iis i)iil.Ilc si)irit: now it is also true 
that nowhere elsi' art' I lie cliar.u'es for niunieipal serv- 
ices as a wliole so low; iiowliere has the policj' of 
small i>rolits ])een carried out so systematically.* 

'Id act otherwise and demand lar^e profits cm serv- 
ices of pid»lic utility is to re-establish in another form 
all the <lisadvanta^a»s of the tax on consumption, so 
justly called the i)ro;;ressiv^' lax on pf)verty. 

In our opinion then, one must look not so much from 
the point of view of profits as of the interests of those 
employed and the* pu1)lic. to appreciate the advantages 
of socialization. 

2. The Condition of Those Eixiployed. 

As a general rule the conditions of existence and 
of labor of the lower grade of emidoyees, in the social 
or communal industries, are better than in private en- 
terprises. *'The private companies," saj's the mes- 
sage of the Federal Council, relative to the purchase 
of the Swiss railways, '*are naturally disposed to re- 
duce as far as possible their outlay for personal serv- 
ices; it is well known, that they all make it a rule to 
reward certain higher finictions very liberally, but 
by way of offset to economize on the lal)«)rers and the 

♦Donnltl: Municipal tradlnp aud protits. (Economic Joui^ 
nal. September, lb\)i), p. 3S3.) See Labrlola, Sul soclalismo 
niiinlclpale. III. Le imprese miinlcii>all debln»no dare uu 
piNtfittoV (C'ritlca sociale, June 1st, liM)0.) For oppnying 
urguuients see K. (^annan, (lu^lU municipal enterprises to be 
allowed to yield a profit ? (Economic Journal, March, 1899.) 



THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL PROPERTY. I07 

lower grade of employees, who, being the most nu- 
merous, involve the heaviest expenditure."* In pub- 
lic industries, on the contrary, it is rather the opposite 
tendency which predominates. 

Not that the salaries of the "silk hats" are insuflB- 
eient to assure them a comfortable existence — the 
smaller employees still find them much too luxuriant, 
but everything is relative, and oftener than not these 
salaries are less than those in private industry, to 
such an extent that the latter succeeds in "seducing 
away" the best officers, drawing off the most capable 
men, those best recognized for their technique. 
• Recently, indeed, the brilliant secretary of the De- 
partment of Industry and Labor, in Belgium, gave up 
his functions to put himself at the head of a vast 
commercial enterprise. 

If, despite all, the corps of functionaries still, along 
with deplorable and burdensome tax-eaters includes a 
fair number of men with energy and intelligence, it is 
mainly because of the over-supply of intellectual la- 
borers. It is none the less true that in a social state 
where money constitutes almost the only stimulus 
and recompense for labor, the State industries can 
not have the best class of managers without assuring 
them the same advantages they would have as offi- 
cers of corporations. 

As for the manual laborers and the subordinate 
employees, it may be said that often, but not always, 
their wages or salaries are higher than in private 
enterprises: the Belgian State, for example, pays Its 
machinists much less than the great French com- 
panies. 

Nevertheless there is no doubt that in a democratic 
state, under a parliamentary government, where the 



♦Message cf the Federal Council to the Federal Assembly, 
regarding: the purchase of the principal lines of railway in 
Switzerland, March 25, 1897, page 58. 



loii v^oi^Li.^ 11 W^M ASlJ INbUSlRIAL KVOI.UTION. 

mass ol" ilic* i>oui)k* i)articipaies in ulectiuus, if the 
uieu are deteruiiued to obtaiu better conditions, they 
can arrive at tlu'ui more easily when tlieir labor is 
exploited !»y the Slate, responsible to public opinion, 
rather than by companies which are wholly or in 
;:reat pan free from its eontiol. 

Then, again, besides, if the nominal wages of those 
employed by the State are less than those in private 
industry, the laborers gain in security what they 
lose in money. They content themselves with less 
pay for the same reason that the holders of govern- 
ment bonds content themselves with less interest. 
The permanency of their positions makes up for the 
inferiority of their wages. It guarantees them against 
the risks of enforced idleness, of sickness, of incapac- 
ity for work by reason of accident or old age, which 
art' a menacing shadow over the lives of so many 
woikers,* and this guarantee, this assurance of dail^' 
bread constitutes so precious an advantage that to 
obtain it the workers employed by the State sui)port 
with unwearied patience all the vexatious and all the 
obstacles which the administrative discipline puts in 
Tlic way of their political liberty or the exercise of 
their <*()nstirutional rights, notably their right of asso- 
ciation. 

It should not be forgotten, indeed, that from this 
point of view, the despotism of the State-employer is 
no better than the despotism which rules in most of 
the workshops of private industry; and it is inevitable 
that this state of things continue as long as the con- 
fusion of services and of public powers under the 
direction of the leaders of the capitalist class. 

•Rt-vue du Travail, ISiX), p. 1, 2tX]. Malines. Industrie du 
meuble: "Certain employers complain about the dltnoulty of 
obtaiulnj; laliorers, caused by the existence of a Slate 
Arsenal in Mallnes. where a multitude of j;ood workers .*?»»^k 
admission In order to make sun- of being iirovldt^d for lu their 
old days." 



THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL PROPERTY. I09 

3. TtLe Purctiase of Kaw Materials. 

Under the system of capitalist exploitation, the 
small producers, and especially the small farmers who 
furnish the raw material for certain great indus- 
tries, find themselves almost always handed over 
without defense to the fluctuations in price which re- 
sult from industrial anarchy, or else to the iron- 
clad contracts imposed upon them by the associated 
manufacturers of sugar, tobacco, chicory, gin, etc. 

When, on the contrary, one or the other of these 
industries comes under public control, the State, by 
reason of the purchase power of which it disposes, 
may exercise a considerable influence over the price 
of* the products and over the conditions of labor for 
those who furnish them. 

This influence certainly presents real dangers, when 
the public power is found in the hands of a coterie, a 
party or a class; but on the other hand when those 
who exercise it concern themselves with the general 
interest, the consequences may be greatly to the ad- 
vantage of the producers of raw materials. 

In Switzerland, for example, the administration of 
the monopoly in alcohol, which has been very un- 
justly accused, on this point, of practicing the system 
of the ''electoral potato,"* renders important services 
to the poor cantons by utilizing for distillation the 
potatoes that they cultivate, instead of resorting, as 
the private distillers did formerly, to maize and other 
foreign cereals. 

In France, thanks to the institution of the tobacco 
monopoly, which limits the amount cultivated by the 
extent of the demand, they avoid the over-production, 

♦Droz: Essals economiques; Lp monopole de Talcaoi en 
Suisse, p. 577. (Paris, Alcnn, 1806.) (The phrase "electoral 
potato" is evidently an insinuation that the administration 
buys potatoes from farmers whose votes are desired.— Trans- 
lator.) 



; \SD INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

liu' iiisiabiliiy ol" prices, tho ruinous dopriH-iations, 
which have hoeu so hard on ih.- l»el;,Mau i^hiuiers dur- 
in;^^ these hist years. "The tobaeeo crop," says A. 
W'a^nur. "is ])i)u;.:ht by the State, at prices which, each 
year, the Minisicr of Finance determines in advance 
and niakos known publicly for the different (jualities 
of tobacco. In this way the planter receives a price 
wliirli is not only remunerative, but which remains 
almost uniform from year to year. II(» thus acquires 
- and the difference is much to his advanta;j:e as coni- 
paiTd wi:h free trade— a solid basis for his calcula- 
tion^, whi -h is a real blessing for the cultivator.*'* 

1 1 ^\•n^,hl be the same with the eultivation of beet 
rnois. if the socialization of tlie suirar industry came 
to deli\-er tile eountry penj,l.» from the exploitation, 
often (MJioiis. to \\liich they are now subjected by 
tiie loid.s of La Tare and La Bascule. The expropria- 
ti<"ii of th(^se would moreover have the advantage of 
relieviuL" ilie niisera]»le condition of the proletariats 
in tli<' su.uar factoiies and of applying the only really 
effective remedy to the countless frauds as to weight. 
tare and density, \\iiich Mre committed when the ])eet- 
roots ;ire receixed. lo the (U'trimeut of the farmers 
and especially of the small cultivat<>rs incapable of 
exercising any etTective control.-^-' 

In a general way. moreover, it may be said that the 
s<M-i;ili/;ii ion of tlie means of jtrodu'-tion and ex- 
rliaimc woul'l I'esult in tlir (lis:i]>iH'arance of the 
frauds, lalsiticatioiis nnd iniquities of every kind 
whicli the furor for pmiit almost inevitably engenders 
under the caiiitalisl system. 

♦\Vagn(»r: Li'lir iiiul Handluich <ler politlsclu^n ookonoinle.— 
Fourth S«u'tion: Fin".nz\vissi>u<c'haft. Third Part: Tabak- 
monopol, p. 72r> and fol. (Lcipzi;:, 1S81>.) 

**()]) this snhjoct ^(»o th(^ present wrlti r's spereii in th«' 
Chamber of Hepresontativps. May li.'fh, 1M)7, and the 
paraphlot: Les vols snr les l)etteravcs et les sucres. (Brus- 
sels, rue des Sables, 35, 1900.) 



THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL PROPERTY. Ill 

4 Ttie Cost of Products and of Services. 

We have already shown the present tendency of 
public services to eliminate the fiscal considerations 
which controlled at the beginning, and to approxi- 
mate more and more either to free distribution or at 
It^ast to selling at cost. On the contrary, wherever 
monopolized industries retain their capitalistic charac- 
ter, the increase of prices becomes a veritable nuisance 
for the public, or for the producers who dex)end on 
those industries. 

At Paris, for example, the gas company— whose 
monopoly will no doubt be renewed by the new Munic- 
ipal Council, elected by the little bourgeois— furnishes 
lighting gas at 30 centimes per cubic meter* (SI. 04 
per thousand feet), while in English cities the rate 
charged business houses by the municipal authorities 
is only 8 to 10 centimes (34 to 55 cents per thousand 
feet).** 

The inconveniences of monopoly and the advantages 
of socialization, regarding prices or taiitTs, naturally 
reach their maximum when we come to fundamental 
industries upon which all others are dependent, like 
the extractive industries or that of transportation. 

Certainly we are foremost in saying that the ope- 
ration of State railways, as it is organized in Belgium 
or Germany, is open to just and manifold criticism. 
But it is none the less certain that so far as regards 
tariffs, as well as the advantages accorded to indus- 
try in general, it is undeniably superior to operation 
by private companies. As was justl^^ pointed out in 



*It offers, moreover, to lower its price and to sell gas tc 
private consumers at 22 centimes per cubic meter, bnt on 
condition that its franchise be extended. On the advantae:es 
that the company would derive from this combination, see 
M. Charnav, L'eclairage au gaz a Paris. (Kevue Socialiste, 
June. 1899, pp. 704 et seq.) 

**The gas monopoly in Chicago charges consumers $1.00 
a thousand feet. It is currently estimated that half the rate 
would cover all legitimate expenses.— Translator. 



112 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

tlio message of I he Swiss Federal Coimeil, i)r()i)()sin^ 
the purchase of the railways, the eori)oratious par- 
1 idilarlN' I'aNor thr -ood lines and limit themselves 
{<) the indispensable where the bad ones are con- 
cerned. Sometimes they even do nothing- more than 
th(» minimum specified in advance by their conces- 
sions, Ix'cause the anxiety for dividends dominates 
every t hi n.u:/'' "There are," says Wolfe, "whole re 
^ions in Kn.irland, and especially in Ireland and Scot- 
land, which are absolutely unprovided with railways, 
because the construction of these would not pay the 
comi)anies." 

The State, on the contrary, linds itself morally 
IxMind to sacrifice a part of its profits to create rail- 
roads in the disinherited regions. In Germany. Aus- 
tria and Belgium there are a number of lines that 
were established for no other reason. 

And still, despite these burdens assumed in the gen- 
eral interest, despite the heavier expenditures occa- 
sioncMl by better pay for the ordinary employees, 
th(M-e is no doubt that in the countries where the 
railroads are operated by the State, the transporta- 
tion rat(^s, for passengers as well as freight, are 
lower than in France and much lower than in Eng- 
land. 

This was pointed out in April, 1801), before the 
I^oudon Society- of Arts, by J. Forster Brown, one of 
the foremost English engineers, in a study of the coal 
industry from the point of view of international com- 
petition. 

"At i)resent." he said, "the most serious competitors 
of England are (lermany and Belgium. The State 
railroads in (Jermany have r(Mluc(Ml their rates to half 
what is ])aid in England, and hav(» ther(0>y developed 
the coal trade, f<>r«'ign as \\-cll as d(Hnestic."** 



•.Mcss.'igc of March IT.. is'.tT. i>p. ■"•1 ot sorj. 

•♦Kcvue uiiivfrscllf d.-; iiiiiu >, .Ian., ICOO, pp. IKj ct seq. 



THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL PROPERTY. II3 

This advantage is all the greater because the unifi- 
cation of the railroad system in' the hands of the 
State enables all the industrial regions of the country 
to profit by it. 

It is principally considerations of this sort which 
have decided the Swiss government to accomplish in 
a single transaction the purchase, almost complete, of 
the railroads situated in its territory.* 

These reasons were also set forth by the ex-Minis- 
ter of Railways in Belgium, M. Vandenpeereboom, 
when, discussing the project of the resumption of the 
Grand-Central, he defended the principle of State 
operation in these words: "No doubt, if we were 
seeking to effect the easiest solutions from the gov- 
ernmental point of view, we should sell the rail- 
roads. They have cost. 1,400,000 francs; they are 
worth 2,000,000,000, and if this transaction were ac- 
complished, the Belgian debt being almost wholly 
repaid, there would be no concern in future about 
the budgets, and all the difficulties that beset the 
organization of a vast enterprise would be suppressed. 
But there is a higher point of view, there is the in- 
terest of industry and commerce. It may be said 
without hesitation that this immense prosperity 
which you see, which is without precedent in our 
own history, and perhaps in that of any other people, 
is due to this pov/erful instrument of labor which is 
in the hands of the State. 

"My predecessors and I, for thirty years, have gone 
on with the singje object of the development of in- 
dustry. To-day "there seems to be some regret that 
the railroads are hot' in the hands of capitalists who 
would have taken out of the service a profit of sev- 
eral millions. The day when all the railroads belong 
to the State, the Charhber will have to debate on the 
point of deciding whether the vState should operate 



♦Message of March 25, 1897, pp. 42-73. 



114 COLLET ri\l>.M AM) LNDIMKLXL EVOLUTION. 

tliciii it.scir (n* t(Hicr(l<' ilu' ()i)(»ratiou to couipaiih^s: 
l)iit I ivi)t'at. that tlio hour this hist deeisiou shall 
have beou taken, the hour of industrial and eoiniuer- 
cial decadence will have sounded."* 

It is scarcely necessary to point out that these argu- 
ments, which made a great impression on the Cham- 
ber, apply, with the necessary changes in details, to 
all other hranches of the transportation Industry. 
What is true of railways is no less true of street-car 
lines, and while in France and the United States the 
regime of the corporations and trusts gives deplorable 
results, in England it may be said that the experiences 
in municipalizing street railways have led to a definite 
conclusion. 

To establish it, we need only cite this passage from 
the :\lunicipal Year Book of 1809: 

**No branch of municipal enterprise has made such 
rapid progress during the past year as that relating 
to tramways. Almost without exception every large 
town has completely municipalized the tramways, or 
is about to do so. The expiring of tramway com- 
panies' leases coincides with the introduction of new 
methods of traction, and before many years the facili- 
ties for rapid transit in our great centers of popula- 
tion will be completely revolutionized. So municipal 
corporations, anxious to get tramways completely un- 
der their control at the earliest nossible moment, do 
not, in some cases, wait for leases to expire, but buy 
out the companies on terms which are prolitable to 
the community. It is now recognized that no tram- 
way service can be of the fullest benefit to the people 
unless it is operated, as well as owned, by the mu- 
nicipality." 

Those who might still have any doubt on this point 
will do well to compare the shaky conches Avith a 



•Annalcs parlomcntalres, ISOC-ISUT, p. 1()63. (Session of 
June l.\ 1S97.) 



THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL PROPERTY. I15 

30-centime (G-eent) fare which disgrace the pave- 
ments of Paris with the elegant carriages bearing the 
city's coat of arms which for 5 centimes (a half penny) 
carry the passengers to the four corners of Edin- 
burgh or Glasgow. They will also be convinced from 
this comparison that the street railway system is 
ahead of the omnibus monopoly, not only as regards 
rates of fare, but also— and this leads us to speak of 
another series of advantages of socialization— as re- 
gards the quality of the services rendered. 

5. TtLe Quality of tlie Products. 

The economists w^ho are most hostile to State mo- 
nopolies are obliged to recognize that these have the 
advantage of furnishing consumers with products 
generally purer than those of private industry. "With 
very high duties," says Leroy-Beaulieu, "government 
monopoly is the only method to have suitable prod- 
ucts, hygienic and not adulterated. This fact is be- 
yond doubt. In the discussions in the German parlia- 
ment, 1877-1878, on the tobacco duty, the Vice-Presi- 
dent of that great body, Herr von Stauffenberg, said: 
*We smokers are well aware that we smoke, but we 
are far from knowing vrhat we smoke: the use of sub- 
stitutes for tobacco is practiced already on so large 
a scale that a whole lesson in botany might be de- 
voted to a description of the vegetables which lie 
side by side in our tobacco and cigars, from the beet 
leaf to the leaf of the cherry tree; what will it be 
when tobacco is burdened with an extra tax of $11 
to $15?' 

"The taxes in France are much higher than those 
of which this orator of the Reichstag spoke, and the 
products are pure; that is a great argument in 
favor of the monopoly."* 



*Leroy-Beaiilieu: Traite de la science des finances. 1., p. 
701. (Paris, Guillanmin, 1892.) 



Il6 COLLlA.ll\ Is.M AM) INDUSTRIAL lAOLlTloN. 

The »siiiiu' ar;,^iimeDl would stem to bold iu Tavor of 
the monopoly of alcohol, if, as was formerly be- 
lieved, the purity of the alcohols for drinkinjj: con- 
stitutes an 1uii)ortant factor hi the stru^r^^le against, 
alcoholism. 

It is known, indeed, that since the introduction of 
the monopoly in Switzerland, the rectilication of al- 
cohols, so defective under the system of the domestic 
still, is operated under conditions so perfect that to 
make the federal "schnaps" acceptable to the con- 
sumers, who found it '*too insipid," the Confederation 
was forced to add .15 of one per cent of fusel (im- 
purity from applebrandy) a quantity, however, which 
is regarded as harmless. 

But let us hasten to say, .u:ranting that alcohol, even 
when perfectly rectified, is none the less a poison, it 
is for other reasons, and principally to facilitate the 
measures designed to restrict its consumption, that 
we advocate the monopoly of its manufacture and 
sale. 

On the other hand, when it comes to food products 
like bread, butter, milk, groceries, all the products 
in a word over the sale of which the public authori- 
ties exercise a control which is burdensome yet too 
often ineffective, it is certain that the argument 
drawn from the better quality of the product pleads 
powerfully in favor of socialization by the State or. 
by the municipality. 

At present the grocers have a reptitation as falsi- 
li(»rs, which certain honoral)le exceptions fail ;to make 
us forget. The milk-dealers, in spite of the watchful- 
ness of the police, do, not wish to give .up the annoy- 
ing habit of baptizing their milk. As .for. the butter- 
makers, large and small, they have such, frequent 
relations with the makers .of butterine. that the lat- 
ter ptiblish in their circulars designs Of elegant 
baskets, and even of pretended kitchen utensils, which 



THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL PROPEKTY. II7 

enable them to introduce butterine into the dairies 
without exciting the attention of the public or of the 
authorities.* 

Finally, if we wish to take account of the disad- 
vantages of the small baking industry, as regards 
the quality of the products, nothing is more unpleas- 
antly suggestive than this description by Baron Fred, 
de Weichs-Glons, in a study in the Revue d'Economie 
Politique on the municipalization of the bakery: 

"Let us enter for a moment," he says, "into almost 
any of our bakehouses: we shall not be long in expe- 
riencing a deep disgust at the sight of what is pass- 
ing, in opposition to the most elementary laws of 
hygiene. We see them almost all established in dark 
retreats, damp, lower than the street, reached only 
by a break-neck staircase or a ladder, in unventilated 
cellars, which have to be lighted even in the day- 
time, which are dirty, and swarm with every kind of 
vermin. The floor, the ceiling and the walls are never 
or rarely cleaned, the toilet rooms are repulsive and 
without water for flushing and are often located in- 
side the bakehouse. There is no place to wash; no 
pocket-handkerchiefs are to be seen, no spittoons, no 
sink under the water-faucet. The kneading-troughs 
serve for beds, and for tubs to wash linen, and they 
even use dirty water to make the dough. The air 
is rarely or never changed, especially in winter, to 
save fuel, so it is stifling, reeking with steam and 



♦The packing gives room for considerable abuse. A great 
quantity of butterine is sold to the retailers in the most 
various receptacles, fancy baskets, housekeeping utensils, 
kitchen utensils, etc. The very prices at which these recep- 
tacles are sold indicate clearly that they are intended to dis- 
guise the merchandise as well as to contain It. and one is 
sometimes surprised at the quantity of butterine retailed, in 
his cellar or a rear shop, by some merchant whose show-win- 
dow would at first sight classify him among the basket- 
makers or dealers in hardware or tinware. Merode: Keport 
on a proposed law for the repression of frauds relating to 
butterine. (Chamber of Representatives, March 7, 1900.) 



Il8 CuLl.KCTiVIS.M AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

cual and tobacco smoke, the products of foniK'ntation 
and the odor of perspiration*." 

Certainly we are nm claiming that this state of 
things is general, that the baking industry is carried 
on everywhere luider such deplorable conditions as in 
Austria, but in any case it is undeniable that the 
making of bread in the grcvit co-operatives makes a 
pleasant contrast with that lamental^h* picture. So it 
is partly with the design of making general the ad- 
vantages of these model bakeries that the municipal 
ov State management of the baking industry i< p'-<>- 
posed.* 

It is equally for motives of hygiene and at the same 
time to avoid an appalling waste of time and strength 
that the municipality of Glasgow has taken under 
Cijusideration a system of convenient distribution of 
milk, previously analyzcHl and sterilized by officers 
of the administration. The authors of this project, 
in a pampld(^t entitled "The Dairy-man and the Mail- 
carrier," insist at some length on this fact, that apart 
from the hygienic advantages of the collective dis- 
tribution of milk, there would thus be a saving of all 
the time expended by the dairy-man in effecting the 
transportation to the homes— a service which could 
be accomplished by a small number of agents, dis- 
tributing milk from door to door, exactly as the car- 
riers distribute letters and newspapers. 

To sum up then, and not to multiply examples need- 
lessly, there is no doubt that operation by the State 
or by tlie cities, not being dominated l)y the exclusive 
concern for profit, does at least offer the advantage* 
of furnishing the ptiblic with prodticts of a purity 
.•111(1 genuineness wliich no one can dou1)t. 'Lhe prog- 



*!)«• Wflchs-Olons: L:i munloipallsation do la li'HiIniigerle. 
(H.'Yiio <1 Econonile poliiique. Octobor-November, 181)7.)— Tin. 

L'otntUatlou (le la boulaiigiTle. (Ibid., April. LS;;?.) 



THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL PROPERTY. II9 

ress of socialization therefore involves an undeniable 
progress in the mortality of economic relations. 

6. TtLe Interests of Generations to Come. 

Independently of the immediate advantages which 
the public derives from socialization, we need take 
account of the fact that operation by the State as- 
sures, much better than capitalist exploitation, the 
conservation and the national management of the 
wealth in the soil and below it. 

The history of the iron mines in Belgium, plundered 
by those holding the grants, is sadly instructive in 
this regard, and no doubt the severe criticism found 
in the Revue Universelle des Mines (Jan., 1900), on 
the operation of the English coal mines may apply 
to other countries: "Though the coal deposits of Eng- 
land still have resources which would admit of main- 
taining the present rate of production for three cen- 
turies, up to the depth of 4,000 feet, the operators 
are taking the cream off this wealth in such a way 
that within fifty years we shall only be able to 
count upon coal more expensive to mine, and for 
that reason permanently dearer." 

When the Transvaal government, at the beginning 
of the South African War, took possession of the gold 
mines of the Rand, to operate them for its profit, its 
engineers made statements altogether analogous: "In 
many places," wrote the engineer, Kubale, charged 
with managing the works of the "Rose Deep," "my 
impression has been that the mine had been plucked 
by the previous superintendents, that is to say that 
they had simply taken out the rich ore from it, with- 
out considering a suitable operation of the mine, and 
without any plan for subsequent work."* 

The same carelessness for the future is manifested 
more brutally still, and with consequences more im- 



♦Economiste Irancais, March 10, 1900, page 305. 



120 COLLl.L 1 U 1.>.\1 A.MJ IMJUblKlAL L\OI.LlIU-\. 

iiifdiaU'ly disastrous, in tlu* wasteful exploitation ot 
the t'oivsis. liv most ot' tin' private i)ropriet<>rs. "Suoni^r 
or later," we read in the bulhniu of the Central So- 
ciety of Forestry of liel.iriuin, "the i)rivate forests are 
in dan;:er of bein;; di'sinjyed, or of no lon^^er fultilliu^ 
the function incumbent ui)on them from the point of 
view nf the LceniTal interest. The proprietor cares 
nothin.^' at all for the influence that his management 
of the forest may have on the climate, tlie water 
system or local industry, lie sees nothiui: but his 
own interest."* 

It is for these reasons that all the agents of the 
administration of forestry, as well as most of the 
econonnsts. declare themselves for the preservation, 
the reconstitution or the extension of the crown for- 
ests, and it is important to observe that nearly all the 
considerations which they urge apply equally to the 
other wealth of the soil and the sub-soil, which ought 
to be administered in the interest of tlir generations 
to come. 

7. Summary and Conclusion. 

The atlvantages we have just analyzed have, at 
least in certain industries, so considerable an im- 
I)oftaiire. that in spite of the prejudices, the oppos- 
ing interests and even the very grave arguments that 
may be opposed to (exploitation by th(^ capitalist state, 
the movement toward the extension of the collective 
domain is manifested in democratic countries, with 
an ever growing intensity. 

Even those who declare tht' most l)itter aversion to 
collectivism are brought by the force of circumstances 
to practice collectivism without knowing it or with- 
out desiring it. 

"The individualist City Councillor," Sidney Webb 



•La (llniinutlou du douiahie boisi'. HiilK'tlu ih' la Soclete 
forestitTe, July, lislH;, p. 507. 



THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL PROPERTY. 121 

wittily siiys, "Avalks alon,u' the municipal pavement, 
lit by munieipal gas and cleansed by municipal brooms 
with municipal water, and seeing by the municipal 
clock in the municipal market, that he is too early to 
meet his children coming from the municipal school 
hard by the county lunatic asj^lum and municipal 
hospital, will use the national telegraph system to 
tell them not to walk through the municipal park, but 
to come by the municipal tramway, to meet him in the 
municipal reading room, by the municipal art gal- 
lery, museum and library, where he intends to con- 
sult some of the national publications in order to pre- 
pare his next speech in the Municipal town-hall, in 
favor of the nationalization of canals and the in- 
crease of the government control over the railway 
system." 

Certainly, we hasten to say and we shall not be slow 
in pointing out, this fragmentary collectivism, this 
State or municipal assumption of the public services 
under a bourgeois regime, differs profoundly, essen- 
tially, from collectivism in the proper sense of the 
word, and in a number of industries its extension 
would offer more inconveniences than advantages. 

Up to the present time we have spoken only of the 
latter, which may be summed up under one and the 
same cause: the public administrations, not having 
the greed for gain, the abnormal appetite for prolit, 
which characterize capitalist exploitation, show them- 
selves more solicitous for the general interest, more 
disposed to take account of other considerations than 
the profit to be realized. 

It is self-evident that officers on fixed salaries, with 
no interest whatever in the profits of an enterprise, 
have not the same interest as private persons trying 
to make their fortune in paring down wages, stretch- 
ing out the hours of work, imposing upon consumers, 
falsifying products or impairing the natural wealth 



.»LLECTIVISM ANP lNl>lJsrRl\L KVOLUTION. 

which forms the common heritajjc of the generations. 
lUil on the other hand -anil hei\» is the n^verse side 
of the miHia I— wherever officialism, public or private, 
reigns, that lack of inten^sr, that pei'uniary separa- 
tion from the interests of the enterprise, must, in a 
serial state when* every! hiui: paraly/es the artion ot 
the altruistic factors, inevitably exercise a depressing 
Intluence on the iniiiative and the energy of the direc- 
toi*s of prvuluction. 

The su^Hn-ior productivity of the unification ot in- 
dustry, of the socializiition of lalmr. is found to l>e 
partially neutniliztnl by the apjithy. the routine spirit, 
the fussy sluggishness, the spendthrift habits, the in- 
differemv to the preferences of the public, whieh are 
too justly n^proached in the mi>dern bureaucracy. 
And if we may eite as a iUvkIcI the management of 
munieipal services in certain democrat ii- towns, all 
that ean be siiid in favor of most of the State indus- 
tries is that while they present the advantages of 
colleetive appropriation, their dis;idvantages on the 
side of production do not exceed, or do not much 
exceed, the analogous disjidvantages which exist in 
the great private (.\)mpanies. 

However that may be. moreover, it can not be re- 
IH»ated too often that it is a stupid error to regard 
collectivism as an extension pure and simple of the 
present public domain. As long, in fact, as the social 
ivlgn of the lK>urgeoisie continues, the ptiblic enter- 
prises necessarily remain capitalist enterprises. 
exploited by the State as an employer, if not 
for the exclusive interest of the ruling classes, at 
least taking the largest accotmt of that inten.*st. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS. 

Vhen everrbody is an office-bolder there will be no 
more office-bolders.— Jean Jaiires. 

In spite of the protests, repeated a hundred times, of 
all the socialist theorists, most of their adversaries ob- 
stinately maintain that the formula of collectivism is 
**all for the State." 

That is evidently to create an equivocation by play- 
ing on the double meaning of the word State. 

The State may be. in a large sense, any social organ- 
ization whatever, but it may also be the policeman- 
state, the bureaucratic state, the instrument for ruling 
which has for its essential motive the protection of 
the sum-total of the interests of the possessing class. 

And by an unthinkable disfigurement of the socialist 
teaching, they come to say that it is to the policeman- 
state, to the State in its present form, that we wish 
to entrust the direction of all enterprises, the monop- 
oly of all industries, the controlling hand over all 
l»ranches of production and exchange. 

If it were really so. socialism would have no ad- 
versaries more bitter than the socialists themselves. 

We are the first to recognize, indeed, that such a 
system would present, on the side of individual lib- 
erty as well as that of social productivity, the most 
serious dangers. Only, what our opponents forget or 
pretend to forget is that socialism aims not merely at 
collective appropriation, but meanwhile at an organ- 
ization of labor essentially different from that which 
exists to-day. 

Now before this socialist orsranization of labor can 



124 COLLECTIVISM AND INDU-'l'KLVL EVOLUTION. 

1k» established, we iiiiisl siipposi', liist of ull, a whole 
series of transfurinations, in>l only in the moral and 
intelleetual order, but in the ixditii o-soeial order, and 
notably the conquest of the public powers by the 
organized proletariat, the differentiation of the gov 
t*rniuental state and the industrial state, and the de- 
centralization of social enterprises, characterized to- 
day by the most stitlinj:: centralization. 

1. Tb.e Proletarian Conquest of the 
Public Powers. 

The fundanu'ntal diffi^rence between exploitation by 
the ,ii:reat corporations and exploitation by the State, 
the iminicipality, or other public authorities, consists 
in the manner of constituting the directing power. 

In the tirst case it emanates from the meeting of 
the stockholders, and therefore is inspired (»xclusiv(^ly 
by their i)rivate interest. 

In the second, on the contrary, it emanates, or at 
least is supposed to emanate, from the generality of 
the citizens who compose the State or the municipal- 
ity, and consequently, in w^hatever measure they 
shart' effectively in the exercise of power, it is in- 
spired by the general interest. 

Kut it goes without saying that if the powi'r belongs 
to an absolute monarch, or again to a diriH'ting (dig- 
archy, the exi)l()itati()n of the public services may 
go directly counter to the interests of tlie greatest 
number, and to the exclusive prolit eitluM* of the 
sovereign or of the ruling class. So it often hap 
I»ens that in a capitalist state, and especially- in a 
nioiiai'chical and military state, there are socialists 
who themselves prot(\st with all their strengtli auainst 
certain extensions of the collective domain. 

'i'lic (Jcrnian social-dtMuocrats. for example, have 
been in the tirst ranks of the opposition against the 
projects of r>ismarck on the tobacco mon(>pi)ly. of 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS. 125 

Kaunitz on the wheat mouopoly, or more recently 
against the propositions of the agrarians relative to 
the transformation of the Reichsbank into a govern- 
ment bank "To demand to-day the creation of a 
government bank"— said Schoenlarik, in the Reich- 
stag, February, 1899— "would be to furnish arms to 
the Junker, to facilitate their projects of spoliation, to 
assist them to paralyze the progress of modern pro- 
duction.* 

Likewise, in his book on the agrarian question, 
Karl Kautsky declares clearly against the bourgeois 
formulas of the nationalization of the land, w^hicTi 
would have no other effect,- in an absolute monarchy 
like Germany, but to increase the number of tenants 
of the State, to furnish it with resources for casting 
cannon, building forts, manufacturing arms, and per- 
mit it. In a word, to make enormous unproductive ex- 
penditures, "w^hile escaping the financial supervision of 
the parliament.** 

In short, the first condition for the extension of 
collective property being advantageous for everybody 
is that the government belong to everybody.*** 

And if it is true that in countries more or less dem- 
ocratic, the proletariat exercises from this time such 
an influence that the social interest predominates In 
the operation of certain State monopolies, what is to- 
day the exception can not become the rule until the 
day when the complete conquest of the public pow- 
ers shall finally crown the political emancipation of 
the workers. 

But however complete may be this transformation 
of these powers, it w^ould not alone suflice to put an 



♦Stenographische Berichte ueber die Verhandlungen des 
Reichstags, 8 Februar, 1899, p. 725 and fol. TWs speech is 
summarized in De Greef, Le credit commercial et la banqiie 
nationale (of Belgium), p. 159.( Brussels, Mayolez, 1899.) 

**Kaut?ky: Die Agrarfrnge, p. .'^21' and fol. 

***Dng Erfurter Programm, p. 129 and fol. (Stuttgart. 1892. 



126 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

(Mid to the manifold disndvantag(^s which result from 
exploitation by the State, in its present form. 

•Most of them proceed, in fact, from excessive cen- 
tralization and from the complete confusion which 
exists, almost everywhere, between the j^overnmental 
functions of the State and its economic functions, be- 
tween what Schaeltie calls Staatswirthschaft (State 
Economy I ayd A'olkswirthschaft (Social Economy), 
or, to take the strong expression of Saint Simon, be- 
tween tlic L,'()verumcnt of men and the administration 
of thin.L^^s. 

2. Th.e Government-State and the 
Industrial State. 

The modern State is not one moral person, but a 
complex, multiform, protean agglomeration of moral 
persons, exercising the most diverse functions. 

Side by side we tlnd warrior structures. be<iueathed 
])y the centuries, and industrial structures, added by 
recent times. 

Represented by its ministers, it is at once general, 
grand master of the university, chief of the magis- 
tracy, prefect of police, and on the other hand director 
of the posts, the telegraphs, the telephones, the rail- 
roads, ])uilder of bridges, inspector of industry and 
of the mines, protector of agriculture, manufacturer 
of currency. 

*'In France," says E. de Laveleye, "the ministers, to 
begin with, dispose of a sum of 3,000,000,000 fraiics, 
which exceeds the revenue derived from the land 
tax. Moreover, they control the budgets of the mu- 
nicipalities, the departments and the benevolent in- 
stitutions, which again amount to a good billion 
(francs). They supervise, regulate and inspect the 
public schools of every kind and of all grades; they 
appoint the bisliops, and pay with one hand the mm- 
isters of worship; with the other, the brietly clad 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS. 127 

dancers who exhibit their graces at the Opera; they 
maintaiEi the institutes, academies, observatories, etc.; 
they determine how many acres shall be planted iu 
tobacco, and how many plants there shall be to each 
acre and how many leaves to each plant, and for 
this matter they appoint special inspectors charged 
to do the counting; they sell this narcotic in the ap- 
propriate bureaux, for which they appoint the in- 
numerable agents scattered all over the country; they 
carry the letters, the telegrams, the newspapers, which 
requires still another legion of employees; they build 
roads and railways; construct bridges and canals; 
they exploit the national forests; they raise new for- 
ests on the mountains and supervise the woodlands 
of private owners; they make porcelain at Sevres and 
carpets at Gobelins; by the rights of revenue, excise 
and by premiums in the favored industries, they de- 
termine the division of labor in all branches of pro- 
duction."* 

And for the supreme direction of these multiform 
services— directed in fact, by officials who are com- 
petent but irresponsible— a certain number of politi- 
cians are chosen, responsible but incompetent. 

Now when the presidency of a board of directors 
of a private railroad is a real profession; when like- 
wise it would be a simple matter of common sense 
to place at the head of the State railways engineers, 
experts, professional men, strangers to politics; what 
is done is to search in some province for lawyers, 
politicians, who usually have no other claim to the 
direction of the national locomotives than the serv- 
ices they may have rendered their party. 

The same minister— that was the case in Belgium 
with M. Vanderpeereboom— manages the railroads 
and guides the car of state. 



*De Laveleye: Revue des Deux Mondes, Dec. 15, 1882, 



128 COLI.KCTIVIS.M AND INDISIKIAL EVOLUTION. 

Let him iiicct m poliiicnl rlirck. niid lie r('siu:ns at the 
siiiiH' liiiir his t(M-hifu-al fiiiK-: inns, and it is precisely 
tliis cDurusioii, I his inc-aparity ov this instability of 
niiuisters, this diverse mixture of contradictory and 
iuconii)ati]>le fnnftions. which furnish the "liberal'* 
economists with the clcaii'st of their ar.i^umeuts. 

Adopt in- the systnn oi" the drunken Helot,* so 
dear t.. the Spartans, they show us the bour;j:eois 
State, with its bureaucratic parasitism, its stitlinj: 
(M'ntialization. its fussy reij:ulations, its wasteful ad- 
min istrai i<>n; and they say to us, Here is the system 
you would like to make ;;eneral! Now, it is (exactly 
the opposite that is true. 

Collectivism does not merely imply the collective 
appropriation of the means of production and ex- 
chan.ire. It also aims at tlie differentiation of the 
I)olitical State, the oriran of the .government, from 
the iiidtisii'ial Stat(\ the baidver. mana.Lrer of trans- 
portation aii<l origan of the economic life of society. 

W(» say diffei(Mit iati(»n and not separation, for if 
the industrial services, the economic oru:ans, ou^ht 
to have an autonomous existence, indispensable to 
their proper working:, they could not have an existence 
independent of the State, in so far as the latter is 
the organ of the rollective will. 

Lepjislative int(4"vent ion. which shows itself at iires- 
ent in regulating the hours of labor, organizing work- 
ingmen's insurance, and protecting workers against 
abuses of authority on the part of the employers, 
would (nidently continue to show itself if the enter- 
prisers had a public charactcM'. Hut more and more, 
in pnjportion to ilu^ extetision o\' the collective domain, 

•It is said that tho Spartans, who woro a small mUitary 
nation In (i recce, livin?? on the labor of a subject class called 
Helots, used to instriict their r-ons In the wisdom of tem- 
perance by niMkln.:; one of these Hrlots drunk, and callin.ir 
attention to his absurd conduct while under the intlueuce of 
too much wine. — Translator. 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS. I29 

the necessity will increase ior a differentiation of 
the economic and the political functions— a differen- 
tiation as complete as that Avhich exists in the indi- 
vidual organism between nutrition, digestion and cir- 
culation on one side and the functions of the nervous 
system, of life in its larger relations, on the other 
side. 

It is this, moreover, from now on which is tending 
to work itself out in all countries, apart from any 
preconceived idea, under the pressure of circum- 
stances. Everywhere, in fact, a distinction more or 
less clear is demanded or is realized between politics 
and administration. 

In 1898, for example, the ''Federation of Industrial 
and Commercial Associations" of Belgium, complain- 
ing, wrongly or rightly, of certain anomalies in the 
tariff of railroad transportation, declared "that these 
abuses will last as long as the railroads are ope- 
rated by the State and directed by a politician, who 
will always be a mark for solicitations and pressure 
of every kind." It demanded, therefore, the estab- 
lishment of a consulting committee on the tariffs to be 
composed of railroad officials, members of parliament 
and representatives of Belgian commerce and indus- 
try, with which the minister should be required to 
coilsult before establishing or modifying the tar- 
iffs." 

A similar proposition is aimed at by a bill intro- 
duced into the French i:)arliament. 

More recently, in the articles which he has pub- 
lished on "Postal Anarchy in France," anarchy which, 
by the way, he seems to have exaggerated consider- 
ably, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu declares in his turn for 
the separation of the political State from the post- 
master State: *'It may be questioned," he says, 
"whether it was a good idea to parliamentarize the 
postal service, that is to say to put at its head an 



130 COLLFXTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

under-secretary of State, a deputy or a senator. The 
postal administration has in it absolutely nothing po- 
litical; it can only be directed by a man who has 
absorbed in his career a certain technical compe- 
tency. Why then put at its head an ornamental per- 
sonage, necessarily incompetent and professionally a 
make-shift V"* 

And why then, let us add, generalizing these just 
observations, why put personages of the same type 
at the head of the other public services, and notably 
of the industry' of transportation, which is becoming 
more and more a State monopoly? Why not imitate 
the example of the Swiss government, which, in a 
project for a government bank, as in the law regu- 
lating the organization of the railroads bought in 
1898, took good care to establish a strict separation 
between politics and the management of public in- 
terests? 

The Swiss railway administration, in fact, preserves 
in its relations to the central power a full and com- 
plete autonomy. The members of its directing coun- 
cil are appointed, partly by the Federal Council, part- 
ly by the Federal Assembly, partly by the different 
cantons. Their functions are incompatible with politi- 
cal and governmental functions. They are profes- 
sionals who are not politicians, instead of being pro- 
fessional politicians.* 

The same system of autonomy exists and has pro- 
duced excellent results in most of the English colo- 
nies of Australia with the railroads,* in Belgium, 
with the savings banks and the municipal loan bank- 
State institutions yet legal personalities distinct from 

♦Economlste francals, Jan. in. lUOO. 

•Message of the FecU'ral Council of March 25, 1S07, chap. 
v. Organization des chemins de fer d'Ktat, pp. 141-154. 

••W. M. Ackworth: Government Railways In a Democratic 
Btate. (Economic Journal, Dec, lb02.) 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS. I3I 

the State,— in England, on the municipal field, with 
school boards, boards of health, etc.* 

By extending this system to all public services, it 
would be possible to suppress the manifold dis- 
advantages resulting from ministerial incompetence 
or instability and from the improper intervention of 
the State-power in the domain of production. But 
this reform alone would be radically insufficient: it 
would bring no remedy for the organic defects pre- 
sented by the State-administration in its present 
form. 

3. Tiie Decentralization of Social Enterprises. 

In the administrative like the political order, the 
characteristic of the present system is centralization 
pushed to the extreme. 

From top to bottom, in almost any administration, a 
system of management reigns looking much more to 
decision than to execution, paralyzing initiative and 
suppressing responsibility. In the Belgian State rail- 
ways, for example— and as much might be said for 
other countries— an engineer in charge of a shop can 
not modify in any way the processes or the system 
of operation in the service which is directly entrusted 
to him, without the authorization of his chief, who 
in his turn has to ask the authorization of the man- 
agement, which again, in most cases, has to ask the 
approval of the council of administration. 

In short, every initiative has to pierce three zones, 
in which it has much chance of meeting obstacles in 
routine, ignorance or hostility. If it starts from a 
man of much will power, it will overcome these 
obstacles, but as men of this type form the excep- 
tion, the initiative quickly finds itself rebuffed, and 
oftener than not, it ends by becoming null. 



*M. Vanthier: Le gouvernement local de TAngleterre, chaps. 
VII. et IX. (Paris, Rousseau, 1895.) 



132 C(JLLi:CTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL hw>i.lilON. 

(Ml ilu* oilier liaiul, this triple ovorhippiu;;, \vbi(»}i 
is rcMjuiivd \)y tlu' urgauization itself— with the aim 
of briup;iiiijr every thini: back to the center— results in 
the suppression of ri'sponsibility. Granted the habit- 
ual ini(»nipeteuce of the minister, it is the council 
of administration which represents the public, for 
the control of the rconoinic management. But to 
wiiom shall the public turn, if the management has 
been badV To the superintendents? Impossible, since 
these have decided nothing and can decide nothing, 
without the approval of the council. And as for the 
superintendents, the head of a department, the engi- 
neer of a shop, not one of them is tempted to exercise 
this control in the name of the public interest, since 
no measure has been taken without as a preliminary 
involving the responsibility of all. 

This system has pushed its roots so deep that the 
control in public administrations is adjusted not from 
the point of view of economics but of formality. The 
great (juestion is to know whether the authorizations, 
following the hierarchical ladder, have been asked 
and obtained. 'J'he cost of production is not consid- 
ered. Xover does the director of a shop, any more 
than a director of traffic or a director of administra- 
tion, make an account of operating expenses. The 
official reports of the minister of railways, for ex- 
ample, as well as the answers to the questions direct- 
(h1 by thi' bouses of parliament, show this clearly. 
The few tigures that are furnished, and that can be 
furnished, are the tabulated statistics submitted to 
the Com])troller of State for the balancing of the 
budget. 

For such a system should be substituted— and noth- 
ing would prevent doing it now; it would even ho an 
excellent prejia ration and training for the fediu'alist 
organization which will rejjlace the present orgauiza- 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS. 1 33 

tion— the system of decentralization, that is to say 
the system of autonomy and of responsibility. 

This system, moreover, the bourgeoisie knows per- 
fectly well how to apply, to the fullest extent, from 
the moment when its direct interests are involved. 
In every industrial corporations the manager is, from 
the technical and commercial point of view, distinctly 
independent of the board of directors. Representing 
the stockholders, this board concerns itself mainly 
with results, it does not interfere with decision and 
execution except in cases where the interest at stake 
is considerable, and where i,t is thought necessary to 
exercise a preliminary control. 

The more important a corporation is, the more com- 
plete is the decentralization: at Seraing-sur-Meuse, for 
example, at the Cockerill establishments, there is a 
manager of the coal mines, a manager of the smelters 
and rolling mills, a manager of the steel works, a 
manager of mechanical construction, a manager of 
the shipping department, and while their shops, their 
furnaces, their quarters are found in the same en- 
closures, while they are operating with the capital 
and for the profit of the same stockholders, each of 
them is completely independent of the others. The 
steel plates turned out by the manager of the fur- 
naces and rolling mills do not necessarily go into the 
shops of the manager of mechanical construction. If 
the former can sell dearer or the latter can buy 
cheaper by applying outside, the manager of the smelt- 
ers will export and his colleague will import into the 
factory. It is the same with the products of the coal 
mines or the steel works. 

An analogous system is found again in railroad 
companies. In the Northern Company (of France), 
for example, the locomotive service furnishes the traf- 
fic service with the appliances of traction, and bills 
to it the locomotive-hours which it furnishes. The 



134 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL KVOLUTION. 

iiiaiKi.i^i'r of the lucomotivo service is responsible to 
the coiupaiiy for the cost of iiiaiuteuaiiee of the loeo- 
inotivi's auil the trattie inaua^^er for tlie cost of haul- 
iiiLC the trauis.* 

Ill the Stale railways, iioihiii;:: oJ" the kind exists, 
and the reason for this state of things is that, in 
the present organization of the Slate, everything pro- 
ceeds from the idea of the one oninii)otent and om- 
niscient power. 

To compK'te, tlu'ivfore. I he advantages of autonomy 
in public service as regards the government, it wouhl 
be necessary to give to each of these services a de- 
centralized organization, comprising sections clearly 
dehned and autonomous as far as possible iu every- 
thing that concerns their own action. Under these 
conditions the responsil)ility of each one, instead of 
being vague and diffuse would become effective an<l 
easy to establish; personal initiative would be en- 
couraged; the organization of State services would 
acquire the 11exil)ility and the freedom of action whicli 
it absolutely reijuires, and while jireserving the ad- 
vantages of socialization, we should borrow from 
the great corporations the superiority which they 
present as regards the organization of labor. 

4. The State of tiie Future. 

The immediate reforms which can be and which 
ought to be realized to increase the advantages and 
reduce the disadvantages of the operation of public 
services are evidently only the key and the starting 
point to much more complete transformations in the 
present organization of the State. 

Peacefully, or through revolution, by a series of 
insensibl(» moditications, or by more or less sudden 
eliminations, tlie authoritative functions of the State 

•This infoniiMtinii appeared over the si;:n:itiire of **Liix," 
au editorial writer, iu Le Peuple, a newspaper at Brussels^ 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS. I35 

will go on decreasing while its economic functions 
will take on an importance ever greater and greater. 

The contrast between the governmental-State and 
the administrative-State is nothing else, in fact, than 
a reflection of the opposition which exists between 
the military structure and the industrial structure of 
societies. Now, every fact indicates that in the last 
analysis and in spite of Inevitable reactions, tempo- 
rary and partial, the political conquests of the pro- 
letariat, the development of its international organ- 
ization, the absorption, more or less complete, more 
or less rapid of capitalist property by collective prop- 
erty, must result in eliminating the causes of war 
between men and likewise between nations, and con- 
sequently result in reducing progressively the im- 
portance of the governmental institutions founded on 
compulsion. 

But, at the same time there will be a correspond- 
ing increase in the importance of the administrative 
institutions, decentralized and autonomous, which 
will have for their object to organize the social com- 
monwealth and to operate in the common interest a 
collective domain always growing in extent. 

If we prolong these two tendencies into the future 
we shall reach a system founded on voluntary co- 
operation in which the governmental-State, following 
the expression of Engels, will have gone to join the 
spinning wheel and the bronze hatchet in the museum 
of antiquities, yielding its place to the administrative- 
State, which is nothing else than the sum of the 
functions and the organs which have for their ob- . 
ject to assure the greatest production and the most 
just distribution of wealth. 

Such is the conception common to all the great the- 
orists of socialism from the anarchist Proudhon up 



136 eoi.i.iAii\i .1 .v.sj' i:M-LMi;i\i. I. VOLUTION. 

to liis rniiiTiial ()pp(»iH'nts of tlir Miirxiau school, 
Iroin the disciples of Si. Sinioii to those of Fourier.* 

All ini;^^ht on this point a(loj)t the eoncliisious of 
Consideraiit. wlio i^xplaiued tlie pliaiansterian doc- 
ii-iiic in his 1m.(»1; entitled Hcstince Sociaie, as fol- 
lows: 

"Slates when t]m<; transformed, re^iilatiu^, in their 
different iustitntional orders, the movements of eom- 
merce and ti nance, presiding over exterior industrial 
r{»lations of the differt^nt centers of population, arc 
ii'ithin.L;- rise ili.tii aLreiieies appointed h.v associations 
niori' or less numerous, and entrusted with the conli- 
dence of those v.h(» lia\-e chosen them. There is no 
lon.LTcr a power ha vim: under orders an army nnd a 
force of police; there is no more despotism nor 
usurpation possihle—a thing which nations will al- 
ways have to fear as long as they are obliged to man- 
ufacture sabres. 

♦See Proiidhon. Du principe fedoratif. Premiere partle. 
Chap. XI. (Paris, ISC'i) and Capacit*' politique des classe.s 
nuvrleres. Deiixieme partle. Chap. XV. (Paris, 1SC5.) Knirels. 
I/oriplne de la faniille. de la propriete privee et de i'Krat. 
Chap. IX., in tine, d'aris. Carre. ISO;;.) Doctrine de Saint 
Simon. Expositinn. IM'S-ISLM). 7eme seanee (Paris, IXiO), 
C^onslderant. Destiuee sociaie (Paris, 18:^4, 1838). 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE FORMULAS OF DISTRIBUTION. 

Society has no beginning without communism. Its 
essence is communism and historic evolution is a 
generalization of communism.— Rodbertus. 
We have just shown that the organization of labor 
under a socialist system would differ far more from 
the organization of State monopolies than these differ 
from the private capitalist organization of enterprises. 
But it is important to insist still more on the pro- 
found, essential, pivotal change which would result 
from the socialization of the means of labor as well 
from the point of view of production as from that of 
distribution. 

^Yhat especially characterizes the capitalist system 
is, as we have already said, the production of mer- 
chandise, or exchange values, with a view to realizing 
profits. "In a system of private property," says Rod- 
bertus, "no work is ever done for social and funda- 
mental needs. Work is done for the market, for 
the demand, which interprets itself by the sums of 
money offered. Extreme suffering may exist; if the 
sufferers have no exchange values at their disposal 
nothing would be done for their relief. Social labor 
is exerted only for the profit of the proprietors." 
Suppose, on the contrary, that property became col- 
lective. It is then for the profit of the collective pro- 
prietors that social labor will be carried on. Instead 
of production being for the sake of profits, it will be 
for the satisfaction of needs; instead of manufactur- 
ing useless or superfluous things when thousands of 
workers are crying for hunger, a start will be made 



138 ( OLLKCTIVISM AND INDITSTRIAL KVOLUTION. 

with tho most prossiui; iumhI; care will be taken to 
ft'ed, lo house, to (•h)the and to instruct before de- 
volin;: the surplus of social effort to more retined 
labors, in short, l»y an apparent return to primitive 
forms production for exclian;.ce will K»ve way to the 
production of use values, bur for the social community 
and no longer, as formerly, for the domestic com- 
munity. 

A\'e can lo a certain extent take account prac- 
tically of the bearin;,^ of this ehan.c:(\ this revolution, 
by coniparinLT, if small thin-rs may be comi)ared with 
lar^ECe ones, the organization of an imi)ersonal, capital- 
istic corporation with that of a socialist co-operative 
society like the Vooruit, of (Ihrnt. or the Maison du 
Peuple of Brussels. 

The corporation to all iiiionis laliors for tlu* na- 
tional or international market: it i)ro(luces exchancre 
values with th(» sole end in view of realizini:: for the 
restric-ted collectivity of its stocldiolders the greatest 
];()ssi])le profits. 

(Generalizing this type of association with its stock- 
hold(»rs without labor and its laborers without stock: 
you have the capitalist social organization. 

The co-operative* society, on the contrarj^— the ideal 
of which would l>e to employ all its mem])ers in the 
|)roduction of everything that they consume— labors 
csj)(H'ially for the associated families, and when it re- 
mains faithful to its principle seeks much less the 
realizaticm of profits than the production of the great- 
est advantages for the co-operators. 

(:• iicraliz(^ this type of association, and you will 
li'ivr a very imperfect idea, very rudimentary too, of 
v.'hnt Would 1)0. or rather niiL^ht be. the socialist sys- 
tem. 

Of course. It would be altog(»ther ridiculous to as- 
sume to find tln' miniature imair*^ of the future world 
in Tlit'<r liltle (Mubryos not yet out of the capitalist 



THE FORMULAS OF DISTRIBUTION. I39 

womb which marks them with its imprint and fur- 
nishes them with the means of existence. But we be- 
lieve, nevertheless, that the best way of conceiving in 
a tangible and concrete way the method of socialist 
production is to take for a starting point its actual 
. . alizations, however incomplete they ma3^ be, to 

iiminate in our thought all the capitalist survivals 

.lat they contain and to imagine on the model of our 
.;reat Belgian societies, for example, a giant co-ope- 
rative society having for its associates all the citizens 
of a country, or of a region more or less vast, possess- 
ing as social property 'all the machinery of produc- 
tion, or at least the productive machinery of all the 
great industries,, in Avhich all the members, at once 
producers and consumers, would give their labor, in- 
tellectual or manual, would elect, directly or indirect- 
ly, their administrators, or their chiefs of depart- 
ments, and would produce all the utilities, all the 
use values, necessary for the satisfaction of their 
needs. 

What the distribution would be in a society of this 
kind is according to our adversaries and our critics 
the problem whose difficulties are manifested by the 
very contradiction of the formulas which are pro- 
posed. 

However great these difficulties may be, and we pro- 
pose to meet them squarely, it should, nevertheless, 
be observed that nothing prevents us from conceiving 
of a collective society from the double point of view 
of property and production in which w^e might limit 
ourselves to improving and perfecting gradually the 
methods of remuneration, of distribution, which ex- 
ist in the present society. 

In the same way that the socialist co-operative so- 
cieties employ wage workers, but assuring them mean- 
w^hile a minimum wage, a share in the profits, a work 
day not exceeding eight hours— at least in Brussels— 



140 (OLl.FA^riVlSM AND IN^DTSTKIAL i:V(JLUT\ON. 

a sial»lc' and pcriniinriit eiiiployineiit, a siM'ios of bene- 
fits in cases of sickness, old age. or incapacity for 
labor, just so in \ho great co-operative which would 
make up a collect ivist society, it would not be in any 
way iinpossibh^ to maintain in a certain measure the 
higher forms of the wage system. 

But let us hasten to add. this partial collectivism, 
this capitalist collectivism, as wc might say— if these 
twQ words would not cry out ar finding themselves 
together—this compact Ix^ween socialism and indi- 
vidualism would be and could be nothing but a transi- 
tion toward complete collectivism. Consequently that 
does not relieve us from studying the fornmlas of 
distribution put forward by the different socialist 
schools. 

However numerous, moreover, these formulas may 
be, they oan be reduced to two fundamental points 
of view: the need of satisfaction or the labor fur- 
nished—the right to existence or the right to the en- 
tire product of one's labor. 

Starting out with the conception of need, of use 
value, and taking their stand on the right to exist- 
ence the communists say: From each according to 
his abilities, to each according to his needs. Taking 
their stand on the contrary upon the conception of 
labor— of exchange value— the collectivists in the nar- 
row sense of the word reply: To every laborer the 
entire product of his labor. 

At lirst sight, these two formulas are absolutely 
contradictory. We believer, however, that it is possi- 
ble and n(H^essar3^ to reconcih^ them and to complete 
each by the other. 

T. Ttie RigtLt to tlie Entire Product of 
One's Labor. 
The right to the entire product of one's labor finds 
its complete realization on Robinson Crusoe's island. 



THE FORMULAS OF DISTRIBUTION. I4I 

or possibly in a social state where, property being col- 
lective, the use of the common property remains in- 
dividual. That is the case, for example, in a rural 
commonalty where, if not every laborer, at least every 
economic unit, every household, receives its allotment, 
produces everything it consumes and consumes every- 
thing it produces. 

But starting from the point where, under any form 
whatever, production becomes social, where asso- 
ciated labor is substituted for individual labor, there 
can be no question of giving each laborer his product 
in kind, but only the value of that product, the equiv- 
alent of the labor power expended is in the common 
work. And there arises the problem of determining 
what is the value as a principle of distribution of this 
ruling formula, this leading motive of all socialist 
programmes: to each worker the product of his labor. 

As Anton Menger* has observed, the right to the 
entire product of one's labor has, in the socialist theo- 
ries, two quite distinct functions, one positive, the 
other negative. By virtue of the latter, the unearned 
incomes, a necessary consequence of the private ap- 
propriation of capital, are seen to be an injustice 
which must disappear. By virtue of the former, each 
worker ought to draw from the total product as much 
value as he has himself created by his labor. 

That it is not so under the capitalist system, re- 
sults, undeniably, from all the considerations that we 
have examined. 

"As soon as land becomes private property/' says 
Adam Smith, "the landlord demands a share of al- 
most all the produce which the laborer can either raise 
or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction 
from the produce of the labor which is employed upon 



*A. Menger: Le droit au produit integral du travail, p. 21!^ 
214. French transl. (Paris, 1900.) 



'^2 I •Mi., I ii\i-.i AM) IMMMKIAL JA'UlAliON. 

the hind, 't^ « ♦ The product' of almost all othor la- 
Ix.r is Iial>l»' t(» tlu* like deduction of prolit."* 

I'Vn* it to bo otherwise, the laborer^', would have to 
be proprietors of their means of production, and them- 
selves consume their product or rectdve its exact 
cMjuivalent. 

'J'o hope for the Kf'uoralization of such a state of 
thini^s on the biisis of individual property, would be, 
as we have shown in our chapters on industrial con- 
centration, the most retro^'rade of Utopias. Hut on 
the other hand, is it possible that the formula of the 
riglit of the laborers to the entire produc't of their 
labor can lind its realization in a socialist state, on 
tli(^ ])asis of Collective property? And supposin^t; it 
were jxtssilde. would this formula of distribution ac- 
cord with justice? Such are the two weighty ques- 
tions wlii'-h it is our duty to examine. 

I'or t'v^'ry laborer to receive the entire product of 
his laboi*. in a system of socialized production. It would 
]>e neeessary- and that is one of the chief objections 
Jliai pi'(»i)le think tliey make to colhM-tivism— to be 
able to isolate this product, to determine the part that 
it represents in the total product of associated labor. 
Now. nf t(M* th(^ count h^ss discussions called forth by 
this ]»i*"])lein. We s'-ni-rely neod to say that this dc^tor- 
minatiou is eonfronted by ditliculties which seem 
itisurmountable. T'nless we limit ours(»lves to empirl- 
(•al valuations or attribute thi^ saim^ value to all labor 
days. skill(Ml and unskilled, how can we estimate the 
value produced by each of the individual forces of 
labor, ceri^bral or muscular, mechanical or executive. 
\\'hic]i unite in ihe extraction.** the manufacture and 
the circulation of a prodtict? 



•Adnm Smith: Wr.nlth of Nations. J. E. Thorold Roger?' 
rditlon. Vol. I.. Book I., Chap. VIII., pp. «8 and (JO. 

♦•Tbo author usos thr^ trrm rxtrartion. for which no lOnglish 
rq'.'lvalcnt in common use can be found, to dt^slgnato any 



THE FORMULAS OF DISTRIBUTION. I43 

To search for the portion of an individuars labor in 
a social product is, in the vast majority of cases, like 
trying to hnd a needle in a haj^stack. 

Moreover, admitting that there v^^ere a common 
measure to determine the value of all individual la- 
bors, still it would not be just to divide among the 
direct producers the entire product of the associated 
labor. That would be to deny the right of the indirect 
producers, of all those whose intangible co-operation 
brings an indispensable help to the common work, it 
would be likewise to deny the right of existence of the 
weak, of the incapable, of ail who are born to suffer; 
finally, and above all, it would be attributing to the 
individuals Avho compose society the results obtained 
by society itself. 

"Individual labor," Rodbertus well says, "is in great 
part fruitful only through co-operation. Why should 
it return to the individual that which he has not cre- 
ated? The collectivity whose united effort alone 
makes the results useful has its right to a part of the 
social product which will not be divided."* 

From the moment, then, when social production is 
substituted for individual production, the formula of 
the right to the product of one's labor can no longer 
be taken in its individualist sense. It signifies merely 
that the laborers taken together ought to enjoy the 
entire fruits of social labor without the possibility 
of any deduction being made by any one having indi- 
vidual control of the means of production. 

But that does not as yet show what share ought 
to come to each laborer in the wealth produced by 
the communitj^ of which he is a part; and it is here 



process by which portions of the earth are converted into 
valuable materials for manufacture, as for example, the cul- 
tivation of wheat or the mining of iron.— Translator. 

♦Rodbertus: Das Kapital, p. 86, quoted by Andler; Les 
origines du socialisme d'Etat en AUemagne, p. 335. (Paris, 
Alcan, 1897.) 



144 COLLKC JTIVISM ANI> INDrSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

that i)uv a(lv(M'sarios— outlining the antithesis between 
the ri.i::ht to existence and the ri;::ht to the product of 
labor— think they have found the stone of stuniblinjr 
for collect ivist socialism. 

Collectivism, it is said, has no formula of distribu- 
tion. Economists like I.eroy-Beaulieu are on this point 
in accord with the communist-anarchists like Kropot- 
kin. who oppose to the collect ivist formula the com- 
munist principle: "From each according to his abili- 
ties; to each according to his needs." 

2. The Right to Existence. 

In his l)ook, "The Conquest of Bread," Kropotkiii, 
developing the formula of the right to existence, or 
rather, of the right to comfort, declares that the only 
principle of division which can be adopted in a com- 
munist society is the principle already adopted by 
the agrarian communities in Europe. 

If the commune possesses a forest, for example, as 
long as fire wood is not scarce, each one has a right 
to take as much as he wishes without any other con- 
trol than the public opinion of his neighbors. 

It i>; the snme with the communal pasture lands. 
As long as there is enough for the commune, no one 
controls what the cows of each household eat, nor 
the numlx^r of the cows in the pasture. >^o recourse 
is had to a division, or to apportioning except when 
th(* pasturage is insufficient. 

And if you go into tlie countries of eastern Europe 
wliere large trees are found in plenty and where 
iHTid is not lacking you sch^ the peasants cutting down 
the trees in the forest according to their needs, culti- 
vnting as mtich ground as they need without thinkiner 
of npportioning th(^ large trees nor of dividing tli'* 
Innd into allotments. Nevertheless, the large trees 
will be ap])ortioned and the land divided according 
to the ih^(m1s of each household from the moment that 



THE FORMULAS OF DISTRIBUTION. '45 

either becomes scarce as is already the case in Rus- 
sia. In a word, they take what they like of things 
that are produced in abundance; they proportion Uio 
things which have to be measured and shared. 

Out of the 350,000,000 people who inhabit Europe 
L'00,000,000 are still following these practices which 
are most deeply rooted in human nature.* 

Let us observe, however, that these primitive meth- 
ods of distribution are related most frequently to na^t- 
ural wealth, the production of w^hich requires no labor. 
From the moment, on the contrary, when the element 
of labor comes in, when the necessity of a productive 
effort makes itself felt, the application of the com- 
munist principle generally meets with formidable re- 
sistance. Besides it is justifiable to ask how intense 
the altruistic sentiments of the laborers would have 
to be that their productive energy might not be weak- 
ened by the absence of any direct and personal inter- 
est in the increase of production. 

Accordingly while we recognize with Kropotkin the 
communist tendencies which are shovv^n e^^en now in 
modern society— tendencies which would receive a 
much more considerable impulse under a socialist 
system— it seems to us as impossible to admit that in 
the distribution of the social product account can be 
taken only of the needs of each individual to the 
exclusion of his work as it was impossible to admit 
that account be taken only of his work to the exclusion 
of his needs. 

At bottom the two formulas— to each according to 
his work and to each according to his needs— repre- 
sent the point of departure and the terminal point 
of an evolution w^hich draws from the present system 
the most imperfect forms of collectivism to end 



♦Kropotkine: La conquete du pain, pp. 78 et 79. (Paris, 
Stock, 1892.) 



146 ( (M.l.lA 1 IVISM AM) INDUSTRIAL KVOLiniON. 

liiially iu the freest aud most complete forms of com- 
luimism. 

On this point, moreover, we agree with some and 
not (he k'list prominent among the communist-anardi- 
ists themselves. "When nations," says Edward Car- 
penter, "have learned the lesson of comniercialism 
and of competition as thoroughly as those of to-day 
liave learned the lesson of each for himself, they must 
have time to forget it. The sense of the common 
life so long stilled and repressed will grow and will 
enlarge anew but slowly. It must be admitted, then, 
that in order to give new ideas and new habits of 
life the time to develop we shall have to pass through 
the intermediate stage of socialism. Such formulas 
as th(» 'nationalization of the land and all of tlie in- 
struments of production,' although vague and really 
impossible to apply accurately, will serve as centers 
from which to develop this sentiment. Their partial 
application will accustom men to the effort of com- 
mon labor and the idea of common work.''* 

Thus the apparent contradiction of the principles 
put forward by the various socialist schools tends to 
disappear when we admit that they correspond to 
ditTerent stages of social evolution. 

We all have communism for our ideal and our ulti- 
mate aim, and even from the present moment, in an 
increasing number of public services, w^e find partial 
applications of it: that is the case, for example, with 
expenditures for free education, with the feeding of 
school children in schools managed by socialist munic- 
ipalities, and with the recognized guarantees of exist- 
ence, at least in certain cases, for the sick, the aged, 
and the infirm. 

Perhaps the time will come when the progress of 
morality and of social unity, the abundance of pro- 

•R. rarpontir: Etapes vers la liberie. (Humanite nouvelle, 
.Ian., 1808.) 



THE FORMULAS OF DISTRIBUTION. 147 

ductiou, the disadvantages and the difliculties of any 
other mode of distribution of wealth Avill result in 
generalizing the application of the communist prin- 
ciple. But, in the present state of things, we must 
needs reckon with egoism, with narrow personal in- 
terest, to the extent necessary to assure the maximum 
productivity of social labor. 

3. Summary and Conclusion. 

To sum up then, it is impossible to formulate a 
principle of distribution which shall be universally 
applicable to all stages of social evolution. The su- 
periority, always relative and transitory, of such and 
such a formula depends, in the last analysis, on the 
faculty which it possesses of assuring better than 
any other— at a given moment— the greatest expansion 
of productive forces, the greatest activity of produc- 
tion as a whole. 

Let us observe, moreover, that in a socialist state 
these questions of "dividing" would not have the es- 
sential importance that they possess to-day and which, 
for this reason, the bourgeois communists continue to 
attribute to them when they transport themselves in 
Imagination to a different social state. 

At present, as a matter of fact, the entire surplus 
value is shared among the holders of private capital. 
It is subsequent to the process of sharing that, a part 
of this surplus value— that which is not consumed un- 
productively— serves to develop the means of produc- 
tion, to reward the indirect producers or else to de- 
fray public expenses. 

In a socialist system, on the contrary, there would 
be no question of sharing except for a fraction rela- 
tively small of the surplus value produced by social 
labor. Before any distribution of this surplus value 
among individuals the community would deduct the 
resources necessary for the further development of 



148 COLLKCTIVI-.M AND INDISTRIAL INVOLUTION. 

product iou, for the wages of the hiborers who mif^ht 
uot participate directly in material productiou, and 
in support of the public services placed gratuitously a: 
the disposal of all the citizens. 

Now in a social state where the influence of < 
niunist prin-r-iples would ^o on ever increasing. I he ; 
deductions made in tlie interest of all would limi 
more and more the held of individual distribution. 

Let us imagine, for example, a society' which should 
itself regulate by acts of collective decision the devel- 
opment of its means of production which should .con- 
cede to all the laborers as well as to those incapaci- 
tated for labor, an e(]ual right to the satisfaction of 
their essential needs, Avhidi should organize into free 
public services, the insnuction and support of chil- 
dren, housing, lighting and heating, the distribution of 
drinking water, the transportation of letters, of trav- 
elers, of products, in a word all the functions of social 
life which correspond to general needs approximately 
the same for all individuals. Is it not evident that in 
a society of this kind, all impregnated with commun- 
ism, the probh^m of individual distribution, according 
to the quantity or the (juality of the work furnished, 
would no longer have mor(^ than a secondary import- 
ance? 

This is already, to a certain extent— we return to 
the subject again to make our thought more con- 
crete — the mode of distribution in force in the socialist 
co-operative societies. 

In the Maison du Peuple at I>russels, for example, 
before proceeding to a division of the profits, the rules 
guarantee to the laborers employed a normal wag«.\ 
to the groups of the Parti Ouvrier rent, heat and 
light; to the sick members their daily bread and relief 
in the way of medicine and medical attendance, to 
the sections of art, instruction, education and propa- 
ganda sums proportionate to the resources which the 



THE FORMULAS OF DISTRIBUTION. 249 

co-operators have at their disposal; and it ix only 
after having made these deductions, and after having 
determined the sums that must be kept in reserve for 
the renewal and the development of the social ma- 
chinery, that the remainder is distributed among the 
co-operators. 

In the same way in the socialist state, it is after 
naving satisfied all the primary necessities, after hav- 
ing assured the right of existence to all members of 
the community, that the excess of the products, or 
rather of the values produced, could be made the 
object of a differential distribution. 

To the extent that it would be socially useful from 
the point of view^ of production to assign special ad- 
vantages to certain laborers, or to certain classes of 
laborers, in order to stimulate their energy and their 
labor power, nothing would prevent a collective so- 
ciety from maintaining— allowing for changing cir- 
cumstances—the gradation of salaries which exists to- 
day in the public services. 

Collectivism does not necessarily imply equality of 
remuneration. 

And this permits us to answer that time honored ob- 
jection that in a coliectivist society all would wish to 
work at the most agreeable and the easiest occupa- 
tions. It would then be necessary, they say, to em- 
ploy constraint to obtain a just distribution of the 
working forces: scavenger work would be compulsory 
as military service is now. 

Let us remark in the first place, that from the day 
when it should be so, the necessary inventions would 
very quickly be developed to reduce the "repugnant 
tasks" to a very small affair. But. to meet the objec- 
tion in all its force, with the usual bearing that is 
given to it. is it not plain that in this regard the 
oollective regime would have at its disposal the same 
means of action as the cnpitalist regime? 



1$0 COLLECTIVISM AND LNDUSTKLAL EVOLUTION. 

What liapiM'Us to-duy wht'n there are too aiaiiy 
Workers in niic braiieli of industry V Wages ^o down. 
They go u|». on the coulrary, when there are too few. 
Tlie same sa net ion woukl exist under a coUeetivisi 
regiini»: after the neeessary deduetious were made 
and (lie niininuini wages paid, the share of each one in 
the surplus to he divided for each branch of produc- 
tion would !)e smaller in proporiiou as the pariieipanls 
were more numerous. (Jonsequenily the over-erowdeil 
occupations would be, relatively, ill paid; the deserted 
occupations, the unpleasant and dangerous tasks, 
would receive a more considerable reward. Ther.i 
would b(» only one difference, and quite in favor of 
(•(.llcciivisni, namely, that to-day, by reason of the 
defects in professional instruction, the passage from 
one branch of industry to another geuerally presiTits 
extreme diflu-ulties, which in a socialist stale cuuld in 
great measure be avoided. 

Ought we to attempt going farther in the examina- 
tion of t1ie problems raised by the organization of 
labor on a collectivist plan; to inquire, for example, 
how and to what extent the groups of workers 
would share in the conduct of undertakings and in 
the st'lection of the directors? To do this would ))e 
failing to see that such solutions must necessarily- 
vary according to the times, the places,- the industries, 
and the degree of intellectual and moral development 
of the producers. 

Just as it is important to be precise and practical 
when it conu^s to measures that must be taken from 
on(^ day to the next, even so it would be, to our mind, 
rash and chimerical to wish to outline in advance the 
detailed i)lan of an organization of which only the 
main lines appear on the social horizon. 

Moreover, if there are some whose minds delight 
in liypoihes(^s of this sort, we refer them to the nu- 
merous pictures of the system of the future which 



THE FORMULAS OF DISTRIBUTION. 151 

have seen the light in the last ten or fifteen years. 
They will have all the choice they could ask between 
the scientific precision of Schaeffle, the rather other- 
worldly ingenuity of Bellamy, the delightfully po- 
etic imagination of William Morris,* and when they 
have gone the rounds of the contemporary Utopias, 
the very diversity of these ideal conceptions will show 
them their essentially subjective character. 

Far be it from us, moreover, to overlook the real 
value of these literary productions; they make pleas- 
antly concrete the abstractness of our systems; they 
answer the thousand objections as to detail w^hich 
rush to the lips of those who hafe new ideas; they 
accustom our thoughts to move freely, outside the 
historic categories of the bourgeois world; but, when 
they have helped us make our dreams more definite, 
it is important for us to renew our contact with real- 
ity, to measure the obstacles which separate us from 
the promised land, and to seek by what means it may 
be reached by the nations now on the march toward 
a better future. 



♦See Scliaeffle's "Quintessence of Socialism," Bellamy's 
"Looking Backward" and Morris's *'News from Nowliere." 



CHAPTER V. 

THE MEANS OF REALIZATION. 

Fleclere si ucciiiro supuros Achenjuta inovobo. 

(If the diviuitii's can uol hv moved 1 will ruiii to the 

d(Uiious).— Virgil. 

In nil the branches of i)roduction and exciian;;e 
w ln'i-t caijitalisl concentration has done its work, dc- 
siroyin.LC or snbjeciini; liersunal property, the I'xpro- 
]>riaiion of tht» ex/^ropriators forces itself upon us as 
I he one really ellicacious means of re-establishin;j: (»n 
a bnjadci- foundation the union of property and labor. 
l^ut if all the socialists are in accord on this point, 
\hv s;iiiie accord is far from existing as to the means 
to employ in reaching this result. 

We may group into three categories the plans of 
socialization proposed by different schools, according 
to their aiming at the expropriation of the means of 
j)roducti()n wirhout indemnity-, whh comjilete indoni- 
niiy. or with a limited indemnity. 

1. Expropriation Witliout Indemnity. 

Those wlio advocate the confiscation pure and sim- 
ple of cni^italist propei'ty can invoke historic prece- 
dents. (»f which the most consi)icuous, of course. Is 
the suppression without indemnity of the feudal rights 
in 17V.>. 

Ill his book on Socialism and the French Uevolu- 
linn, Andre Lichtenberger hns clearly shown that the 
nruMiiiients ^vhich tend to justify the expropriation by 
tlie iMiui'geois ;il>]>^v. tliroULili identity of motivt^s, to 
th(» expropriation of the bourgtM)is, and that constv 
(luently, whoever exults ov(m* the annihilation c^f the 
]»rivileges of 17S!>, is i>erhaps rather ill grounded In 



THE MEANS OF REALIZATION. I53 

protesting for the sacred character of the privileges 
of 1900. 

"Much less threatened, no doubt, than the feudal 
privileges in 1789," says Lichtenberger, "capital lias 
this in common with them, at the present moment, that 
it represents legitimate property only in the eyes of a 
certain fraction of the nation, and that it might be, 
as the feudal rights were, seriously put in question, 
whenever that hostile portion of the nation, coming 
into power, might make for itself a detinition of prop- 
erty in which capital should not be included. Indeed, 
it need not be said that, theoretically, such a measure 
would be much more menacing to property than was 
that of 1789. From the moment that prescription 
ceases to cover property, we may imagine well 
enough with reference to capital a policy quite analo- 
gous to that which was followed in dealing with the 
feudal rights. A distinction was drawn, among the 
feudal rights, between those which proceeded from 
mortmain and ought to be suppressed, and those which 
were derived from property and ought to be redeem- 
able. A distinction would thus be made in capital 
between what is due to the accumulation of the 
product of labor and that on the contrary which is 
due to the labor of money alone: this last being re- 
garded illegitimate and suppressed, and the first alone 
being preserved or replaced by consumable goods. 
And why, just as every sort of feudal privilege was 
finally abolished without indemnity, by reason of the 
hostility of the aristocrats to the new regime and 
of the exigencies of the public safety, why likewise 
should not every kind of capital, not paid for in 
consumable goods, have the same future, for reasons 
quite analogous?" 

'■'Lichtenberger: Le socialisme et la Kevolutlcn francaise, 
pp. 234 et seq. (Paris, Alcan, 1899.) 



15^ COLIJAIIVI-M .\M) INDrSTRlAL KVOLrTI^ 

No ono could say, in fact, whether the resisuiiicc of 
tho possessing class will not sonic time have the 
Ranie constuinences as at the end of the last cen 
tury; whether the lonj? considiu-ed project of pacilic 
and ^'radual expropriation will not suffer tho same 
fati^ as the siniihir projc^cts elaborated on the eve 
of the French Revolution by Turgot, Condorcet and 
their fellows. Only, if the conliscation of capitalist 
property, its expropri.ition without indemnity, be con- 
ceivable— leaving apart the question whether it would 
be legitimate— we must necessarily take for granted 
a simultaneous suppression of all titles to income, 
whether resting on land or capital. 

As Kropotkin shows conclusively, there are in civ 
llized societies connections established which it is im- 
possible to modify materially if they are touched only 
in part. *'Let us suppose indeed," he says, "that in 
certain regions a limited expropriation is made, that it 
is confined, for exampb\ to the expropriation of the 
great landed proprietors without touching the facto- 
ries, as Henry (Jeorge demanded; that in such and 
such a city the houses be taken over without making 
common property of the merchandise, or that in such 
and such an industrial district the factories be taken 
over without touching the great landed properties. 
The result will be in every case the same. An im- 
mmise upheaval of the economic life without the 
means of reorganizing that economic life on new 
foundations. A check to industry and exchange with- 
out a return to principles of justice, a state of things 
from which society could not possibly reconstitute an 
harmonious wholi\" 

The n^asoning— which we find in Deslinieres (Ks- 
(iuiss(» du regime collectiviste)— seems irrefutable*:— 
cxproi)riation without indemnity will be complete or it 
will not l)e undertaken. 

Kut. on the otlK^r hand, evidently, if this exproprla- 



THE MEANS OF REALIZATION. 155 

tion is not to meet with insurmountable difficulties, 
it must needs be that capitalistic concentration should 
have arrived at its completion; that personal property 
should exist only in memory; that the immense major- 
iry of the citizens shall be composed of prolotariuuH 
v.iio have ''nothing to lose but their chains." But, 
"ven on this supposition, the realization of which 
seems at least distant, there is no doubt that of all 
forms of social liquidation expropriation without in- 
demnity, with the resistance, the troubles, the bloody 
disturbances which it would not fail to produce, 
would be in the end the most costly. 

"We do not at all consider," wrote Engels in 1894, 
"the indemnification of the proprietors as an impossi- 
bility, whatever may be the circumstances. How 
many times has not Karl Marx expressed to me the 
opinion that if we could buy up the whole crowd it 
would really be the cheapest way of relieving our- 
selves of them." 

Let us then examine whether this purchase would 
be possible, granting the capitalists what the Belgian 
constitution calls "a just and reasonable indemnity." 

2. Expropriation -witb. Indemnity. 

This is the process that the present governments 
practice when they buy up, for example, a railroad 
concession. 

The State borrows the necessary sums to effect the 
purchase and the expropriated capitalists receive, at 
the very least, the equivalent of what they give up. 
Oftener than not, the indemnity which is paid to them 
greatly exceeds the value of the property which enters 
into the public domain. But supposing it does not, 
that the purchase is effected under normal conditions, 
who does not see that such an expropriation does not 
in any way solve the problem of the elimination of un- 
earned incomes? 



156 ^OLI.KCriVlSM AND I Nl »!'< IklA I. IV-M-l'TIUN. 

W'r siii)i)ress, it is true, tlii^ dividends of the stook- 
linl(h IS. hut wo KJve them p)VPruin«MU ]><>nds in ex- 
<'li;in;^^e. W(^ extend the coneetivo domain but we 
increase proportionately the pul)lie debt. Thai is wliy 
I'inci says in an interesting' i»aniphh*t: "Those wlio 
l>orn;\v to ereate a national pMlrimon^' aet counter to 
the interest of the eolleetivity :ind for the advanta;ro 
of the capitalists, as lon^ as the latter receive their 
interest. They are buying from them property for 
more than it cost, and they are making; investments 
for tlje State which, as a general things, do not bring 
to it more than enough to cover the interest." 

There is no doubt some exaggeration in these criti- 
cisms. In spite of the exorbitant price of certain 
l)urchases, the unilication of the Belgian railroads - 
indop'-ndently of the advantag(»s offered to The pnbli.- 
and tlie employees— was not, financially speaking, a 
disad\ antageous transaction.* But it remains no less 
true that the resumption of the nutans of production- 
when once it involv(»s the increase of the jjublic debt 

(l(K's nor in any way put an end to the exis1i'n«-o at' 
a parasitic class which has the privil»"ze of li\ing 
without labor, thanks to the exploitation of iho lai»or 
of others. And under these conditions we cjui i-<»h- 
roivr only of the suppression of this parasitic class 
by banliruptcy or a sinking fund. One of two thinus. 
citlK'r the Stat(» would refuse or would iind itself 
unal'lc to fulfill its engagements,— which brings us 
back by an indirect way to the hyi>othesis ..;* « xpro- 

•Th»* piirchasoH wor(^ ofTootod ojther Ity friendly ;iir: «• ;i» ut 
or by viriin* of a purchnse clause iiistTied iu the orlixii-.l 
;:r.Mnis. Kxprdprlation for the sake of public utility, wlileh. 
Is based on Article 54.'. of the Civil Code and Artbit. n . r 
the Helkjlau Constitution has in view any kind of property 
l»ut lias not luM'U put In practice except in th.- ease of fixed 
jiroperty. As to th(» neeesslty of a jjmeril law on exi»r..- 
prlatlon for the sako of i)ubllc utility, see- Fabler. "De lex- 
tenslon en toules niatleres du dndl d'exprnprlatlon." (!Je>;", 
Desoer, 1S97.) 



THE MEANS OF REALIZATION. I57 

priation without indemnity, or else it would proceed to 
the gradual extinction of the public debt. 

But, for a sinking fund resources are necess[\ry, and 
those resources must necessarily be demanded either 
from labor or from accumulated fortunes. And this 
brings us to seek by w^hat means the collectivity 
might indemnify the living capitalists while exprn- 
priatlng without indemnity the dead capitalists. 

3. Expropriation with. Partial Indemnity. 

Among the modes of expropriation which belong un- 
der this formula there are some which assume- just 
as does expropriation without indemnity— a sudden 
and complete transition from the capitalist regime to 
the collectivist regime; there are others, on the con- 
trary, which are perfectly consistent with a gradual 
and even limited transformation. 

Schaeffle in "The Quintessence of Socialism" char- 
acterises as follow^s the systems of the first group: 
"The bourgeois may have a right over w^hat he has 
acquired under the present system of production, and 
Vv'e will purchase from him his private capital, as he 
purchased the feudal right. But he has no right to 
claim for all the future the prevention of a better 
form of production. A new form of production may, 
at any time, be proclaimed by the people as a new 
state of justice. Thenceforth the capitalist will no 
longer be able to carry on his great industry alone: he 
will learn to think himself fortunate if society pays 
him and his children for his private capital in annui- 
ties consisting of means of enjoyment, which shall 
last until every one has adapted himself to the new 
conditions. Our capitalist will bow before the new 
right, proclaimed by a majority of the people, as the 
nobility had to bow before the right proclaimed by 
the bourgeoisie, and content itself with the purchase 
price x)f its claims for feudal service." 



I5S lO: LIX'TIVISM AM) INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

ir rrcourso wore had to such a process of expropiia- 
Tidii. a family which possossod, for example, means of 
I)r()(liiction to the value of SL*(),0(K),OO0, ought to regard 
itself as suthcieutly indenmilied. if in the course of 
thirty, forty or lifty years it received in annuities the 
calculated value of $j!0,UOO,000 in the form of means 
of consumption, of luxury, or of pleasure. 

But, again, we suppose the simultaneous suppression 
of all forms of private capital. It would certainly be 
inadmissible that certain proprietors receive no more 
than a temporary annuity while others should continue 
to draw a perpetual income. Consequently, the for- 
mula of limited indemnity becomes inapplicable the 
moment that we deal with a gradual passage— follow- 
ing the line of least resistance— from capitalistic ap- 
propriation to collective appropriation. This process 
of socialization cannot be accomplished normally ex- 
cerpt by applying the same rules to every one, with- 
out creating different categories for the different cate- 
gories of capitalists. 

"The new social organization, the essence of which 
is that it is based on justice, ought to be accomplished 
without causing a single act of injustice." (Col ins j 
This may be arrived at by adopting a system which, 
according to the expression of Bazard, "consists In 
transferring to the State, which will have become 
an association of workers, the right of inheritance 
which to-day is limited to the domestic family."* 

Among the countless systems which are intended to 
limit the right of inheritance, legal or testamentary, 
it will suffice to cite by way of example the methods 
proposed by Colins in his "Theorie generale de I'organ- 
isation d(» la propriete:"** 

**1. Inheritance Without Testament. 

•La Science soclale. t. V.. pp. 320 et seq. 
•♦Doctrine do Saint Simon. Exposition 1S28-1S29. JScptem- 
bre seance, p. 187. (Paris, 1830.) 



THE MEANS OF REALIZATION. 1 59 

*'Tbe only inheritance without testament which is 
necessary to the incitement to labor is direct inherit- 
ance. Any other is needless for this incitement, so 
long as the privilege of testament exists. 

''It is therefore proposed to annul by law all collat- 
eral inheritance and make collective property of every 
estate left without direct heirs and without testa- 
ment. 

•'2. Inheritance by Testament 

"Inheritance by testament is necessary to the in- 
citement to labor, as the primary social motive. 

''In truth, this inheritance tends continually to di- 
minish the collective wealth and increase individual 
wealth, and, consequently, to lead to the pauperism of 
the masses. 

"But society, which alone protects the organization 
of property and the organization of the family, may 
place on this sort of heredity a tax as heavy as pos- 
sible, provided it does not put an end to the incite- 
ment to labor. 

"We do not carry this tax above 25 per cent. 

"It is evident that whoever shall inherit by testa- 
ment the sum of 100,000 francs will not think he is 
experiencing unfair treatment by receiving only 75,000 
francs when he knows that he himself has his share in 
all possible successions made by testament. 

"It is therefore proposed to establish by law a tax 
of 25 per cent upon all successions by testament." 

It goe^ without saying that the rate of this tax, the 
possibility of its immediate application, and in short, 
the radicalism of the reform in succession laws, 
would depend in large measure on the parallel progress 
of legislation in neighboring countries and a number 
of other circumstances, too many to enumerate here. 
But, however that may be, it can not be denied that 
the limitation, more or less strict, of the right of in- 
heritance seems one of the most effective methods to 



l6o COLLI (IIXI^M WD IXnUSTRTAL FVOr.UTION. 

sp^'nro for the Stati?, or niorc acruratol^', for the c^jI- 
Icciivity, tli«' rosoiiroos nooded to brine:: about the 
.irradual socialization of tho moans of production. 

It remains to inriniro how thr^so resources might be 
niost usefully employed to that effect. 

\\'e find ourselves hovo in the presence of three prin- 
cipal systems, to which all oiluu's. in the last analysis, 
may ])o reduced: 

1. l^stablishment of societies for production au- 
thorized by the State. 

2. Entrance of the State into enterprises existing 
or in process of establishment. 

3. Complete socialization of certain industries by 
the payment of a purchase indenmity. 

A Societies for Production. 

Tills is the system which Menger calls "Societary 
Socialism," and which has become associated with the 
names of Louis Blanc and Ferdinand Lassalle. 

When I.assalle asked of the State a hundred million 
thal(»rs to etjuip workingmen's associations for pro- 
duction all over (Terman3^ he was really taking up 
the i)rojects of reform elaborated by Louis Blanc dur- 
imr the revolution of 1848. 

In his book on the "Organization of Labor." and in 
\'olumo IV of his ''Questions of To-day and To-mor- 
row," Louis Blanc, taking up an idea of the disciples 
of P^ourier, proposes to organize a Ministry of Prog- 
ress, which shall have for its principal work to bring' 
about, by gradual reforms, the disappearance of the 
I^roletariat. This ministry should have under its con- 
trol the railroads and the mines, the banks of issue, 
the insurance companies, and should establish stores 
for retail trade and depots for wholesale trade, with 
the right for the latter to pay over, in return for mer- 
chandise deposited, a sort of merchandise-money. The 
])rofit which the State would draw from all these en- 



THE MEANS OF REALIZATION. l6l 

terprises would serve at first to pay for the capital 
aud the interest on the sums required by these ope- 
rations; the surplus would provide for the ''working- 
men's budget." This budget would serve to establish 
workingmen's associations, agricultural and indus- 
trial, extending to them the credit of the State for 
the purchase of the means of production. 

"This establishment," says Louis Blanc, "requiring 
an outlay of considerable funds, the number of the 
original factories would be rigorousi:y limited, but by^ 
virtue of their verj^ organization, they would be en- 
dowed with an immense expansive force. 

"The government being considered as the sole 
founder of the social factories, it will be its part to 
revise the statutes. This revision, deliberated over 
and voted by the nation's representatives, will have 
the form and the force of law. 

To work in the social factories— to the extent per- 
mitted by the capital first brought together for the 
purchase of the instruments of labor, all the w^orkers 
w^ould be called who offered guarantees of moral- 
ity. 

"As the false and anti-social education given to the 
present generation does not permit us to seek else- 
where than in an increased reward any motive of 
emulation and encouragement, the difference of wages 
would be graduated on the gradation of functions, 
until a new education changes ideas and habits as to 
this point. It goes without saying that the wage 
would in all cases be amply sufficient for the needs 
of the laborer."* 

In the thought of their promoter, these social facto- 
ries were to present, from the point of view of the 
productivity of labor, such a superiority over the 
capitalist factories, that the latter would be inevitably 



*Loiiis Blanc. Organization du trayall, pp. 117 et seq. 
(Bruxelles, 1852.) 



l62 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

(iooiiH'd U) disappear, or to ])(» transformed into social 
factories. 

'•Instead of being, as every big capitalist is to-day, 
I he master and the tyrant of the market, the govern- 
ment would be its regulator. It would employ the 
arm of competition not for the violent overthrow of 
private industry— something it would strive above all 
to avoid— but for bringing it insensibly into combina- 
tion. Very soon, in fact, in every sphere of industry 
where a social factory should have been establislied, 
we should see people flocking to that factory on ac- 
count of the advantages which it would present to 
those in corporations, both laborers and capitalists. 
At the end of a certain time, we should see repro- 
duced, without usurpation, without injustice, without 
irreparable disasters, and to the profit of the principle 
of association, the phenomenon which to-day is pro- 
duced so deplorably and by force of tyranny, to the 
pro tit of individual egoism. A very rich manufactur- 
i'v may to-day. by striking a heavy blow at his rivals, 
leave them dead on the field and monopolize a whole- 
branch of mdustry. In our system, the State would 
little by little become master of industry, and in place 
of monopoly we should have obtained as the refiult 
of success, the downfall of competition— association." 

Many things would have to be revised in this pro- 
ject for organization of labor, which substitutes, in 
fine, collective monopoly for capitalist privilege, and 
which leads to the suppression of competition within 
the various branches of production, but only to ac- 
centuate it in the relations of each branch of industry 
to the others. But, apart from these considerations 
of principle*, it would bt* a strange illusion to suppose 
that in th(* present state of development of capitalism, 
any co-operative societies of production, even aided 
financially by the State would be in a position to com- 
plete successfully and to reduce to their mercy the 



THE MEANS OF REALIZATION. 163 

;j:reat enterprises which occupy and dominate the 
market. 

It is scarcely anywhere but in the branches of pro- 
duction whose capitalistic development is still feeble 
—most of the farming industries, for example— that 
the system of productive associations might, in our 
opinion, serve as a bridge to a state of complete social- 
ization. 

B. Ttie "System of Penetration." 

Instead of creating new enterprises, whose compe- 
tition should cause the disappearance of capitalistic 
enterprises, modern socialism designs rather to social- 
ize the existing enterprises, whether by expropriating 
them or by introducing into them the participation of 
the State. To this last system belongs the plan of 
'•free socialization" communicated to the Belgian Sen- 
ate by E. Solvay, Dec. 27, 1899. 

Solvay, being anxious to provide resources for the 
State without taking them from labor, and meanwhile 
to carry socialization as far as possible without strik- 
ing at liberty or individual initiative, advocates a 
series of measures which he sums up as follows: 

*'It would be necessary at first to proceed to the 
revision of the laws regulating corporations, in order 
to prevent in future the too easy launching of any 
sort of enterprises to the almost exclusive profit of 
the promoter and the injury of the stock- 
holders. We might, for example, impose 
upon the founders of an enterprise the obligation to 
remain interested in it five or ten years; the investors 
ought not to be paid except from the profits in excess 
of a certain rate of interest, etc. The measures to 
be taken in this regard should evidently be exam- 
ined with care, but in any case, the revision of the 
legislation now in force is imperative, even to the 



l64 COLLECTIVISM AM) INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

exclusion of the moro ^^ccnoral oiul that I have indi- 
cated. 

**The iiiiinbrr oi' tlic unsuccessful industrial and 
commercial i^ntcrprisi^s would thus be found to be con- 
sidi'ra])ly reduced, and as, otherwise, the prosperity 
of such countries as I>el;?ium. (Tcrmany, Kn^^land, ex- 
amined by periods, ;;oes on increasing, any one who 
had enoui^h financial stren.mh to interest himself at 
once, even with his eyes shut, in all the enterprises 
which are crojited would be sure to make money by 
virtue of the law of averages, which is successfully 
api)Iied by insurance companies of all kinds. 

**The State, in my thought, would ])ecome, l)y virtue 
< f a law, this g(*neral participant in all the enterprises 
created in the country. It would be authorized to 
say to the public: Bring in as much money as you 
wish, at a rate more or less equivalent to that of the 
national loans; I accept it in order to invest It, like 
an almost passive stockliDlder, in all the enterprises 
which are created or enlarged. This investment would 
of co\irse be made under tixed rules to be deter- 
iiiiiied. 

"rnd(U' these conditions. th(^ State could not have 
in I his eas(» morc^ than an insigniticant responsibility, 
and extremely limited expenses of administration, and 
it would i)rofit by nearly the whole difference between 
the Interest going to those lending money and the 
average dividend drawn by it on the sum total of 
the ent(MT)ris(^s in whieh it would be interested. The 
more mene}' was ]>rought to it, th(» more it woidd 
iiici'ease its holdings. Private initiative in creating 
(enterprises would remain intact, would not even be 
touched, and yet the State, in so far as circumstances 
permitted, would be socializing th(» enterpris<»s more 
an<l more. And we may go so far as to conceive a 
theoretical social stat(» restdting from all <Miterprises 
being finally socialized by the continued application 



THE MEANS OF REALIZATION. 165 

of this principle of liberty. Private initiative would 
never liave ceased for a nioment to be fully respected 
yet it would no longer be exercised at tiiis last stage, 
except with the single end of obtaining for those who 
are active a superior reward for their labor, au in- 
dustrial or commercial salary instead of a simple offi- 
cial salary. 

**It seems to me that there may be in that a valuable 
principle. It comes to my mind as a solution that I 
have long sought for the problem of the progress and 
the limitation of progress of the social democracy, 
and at the same time of the socialization of enter- 
prises; progress, limitation and socialization w^hich 
would be, in fact and tacitly, determined for the State 
by the nation itself without departing from the regime 
of complete liberty." 

To sum up then, the State would borrow, at the 
ordinary rate of its loans, all the money that people 
wished to entrust to it, and would invest this money, 
conforming to certain rules of procedure, in all en- 
terprises of a character worth considering. 

The thing that seems to us new and really original 
in the project put forward hy Solvay is not the 
mere idea of socializing enterprises by introducing 
State participation into enterprises directed by private 
persons. We may, indeed, cite many examples of this 
participation, from the Prussian State, already a 
stockholder in the Bank of Prussia, to the Belgian 
State, which is a stockholder, along .with a great 
number of private persons, in the Suburban Railway 
Company. But to our mind, the real originalitj^ of 
the system consists in its generalization, in the use 
that it makes of this undeniable fact, that if the 
individual capitalists do run risks of loss, the sum 
total of capitalist production necessarily realizes prof- 
its, and profits which go on always increasing. 

If then there existed a physical or moral person 



l66 COLLKCTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

siron;: c'iJuii;:h linaiichilly to iiituresi himself in all 
tho enterprises which are established, he would, by 
the law of avera^'es, b(^ niatheniatieally certain to 
iual;r inoiicy. 

Now, the State may play this part, by maldn^^ 
itsc^lf everybody's banker, the intermediary between 
those who have money to invest and those who have 
a worthy enterprise to establish. And under these 
conditions, it would i)rofit by almost the whole diCfer- 
ence between the interest going to the lenders of 
money and the average dividend drawn by it in the 
sum total of the enterprises in which it might be 
interested. 

Let us observe, however, that this difference would 
be little or nothing when the State entered into old 
enterprises, into corporations established some time 
before and arrived, so to speak, at the stationary stage, 
for it w^ould have to buy the shares, not at their nomi- 
nal value, but at their value on the stock exchange; 
and this value would have no great chance of in- 
crease in the future. Conseciuently, the participation 
of the State in the affairs of an old established corpo- 
ration could have no other reason than to prepare or 
to facilitate the complete expropriation of the latter— 
an expropriation which might be thought advantage- 
ous for other reasons.* 

•Some years ago the Swiss Government had recourse to this 
proeesv?, nnder the following: conditions: "Until the end of 
l.*<08 there could he no question of the purchase (of the 
Swiss railways) in the way of condomnation of their grants. 
The Foderal rVmncil accoVdinLrly tried another way, which 
is callrd tlie syst<'m of penetration, because it consisted in 
the 'penetration' of the Confederation into the companies by 
purchasing, l)y mutual consent, from their proprietors. hirg»' 
blocks of stock, which permitted it at tlrst to exercise a 
preponderant intluence In the general meetings of tliese c<tm- 
panies. and perhaps later to bring theni to consent to pur- 
chase by friendly agreement. (Le rachat des chemlns de 
fnr en Suisse, Ulrculalre du Musee Social, No. 18. 25 Mai. 
1898.^ 

It is with this end that tlie Federal Council acquired 



THE MEANS OF REALIZATION. 167 

But on the other hand, when new enterprises are 
in question, the "system of penetration" advocated 
by Solvay seems like a very attractive method of in- 
teresting the State in all enterprises, and of conduct- 
ing the transition between the capitalist system and 
a system of complete socialization. 

However, we can not agree with Solvay; when he 
holds that the State, when entering into all the enter- 
prises which are established or enlarged, could be and 
ought to be nothing but an almost passive stockholder, 
having no other function than sharing in the prof- 
its. 

By reason of this same sharing, the collectivity 
would become morally responsible to the laborers 
employed in these enterprises; as a shareholder and 
profit-receiver, it would have the power and the 
duty to look to it that the length of the labor-day, 
the rates of w^ages, the organization of workingmen's 
insurance, etc., should answer to the imperative re- 
quirements of the public conscience; and, as the hold- 
ings of the State grew larger, so its influence and its 
obligations would increase at the same time. 

Thus finally, Solvay's system of "free socialization** 
would lead to the same consequences as the com- 



June 27, 1890, 30,000 shares of the Jura-Berne-Lucerne com- 
pany; then, the same year and the next year, 47,090 shares of 
the Jnra-Simplon company, which had just combined with 
the former. At the end of 1891, the Confederation thus found 
itself in possession of 77,090 shares of the company, which 
had issued altogether 104,000 shares of preferred and 245,000 
of common stock. 

At the beg-inning of 1891, a syndicate of banking houses 
offered to the Confederation 50,000 out of 100.000 shares of 
the Central Company. But the administration of the Cen- 
tral declared that it preferred to cede the entire system. 
The Federal Chambers pronounced for this course, but the 
proposal was rejected by the referendum, partly because it 
was found that the Confederation was paving for the shares 
of the Central above their real value. The vote of 1891 put 
an end to the policy called penetration, as well as to any 
attempt at friendly purchase. 



l68 COLLEC'lIVISM AM) lNl)i;STRIAL KVOLUTION. 

plotc socinlizniidii (»!' I he ;;re:it industries which is 
{•fnitaiucd in tli" si.ci.'ilist pro^rainnics. 

C. Th.e Complete Socialization of Industries. 

Adniittin.i: tin* hyi)()tlii'sis of a colk'ctivist policy, 
h:ivint: for its ()]>jcct the gradual capture of the prin- 
cipal industries l>y the municipalities or the State, 
after these have been democratized, decentralized and 
separated from the machinery of authority over per- 
sons, it would evidently be in order to attack first— 
following the line of least resistance — the natural mo- 
nopolies and the artificial monopolies created by the 
concentration of capital. 

Indeed, wh(^n it comes to industries that are mo- 
nopolized, all the arguments that the adversaries of 
socialism employ in favor of individual initiative and 
the advantages that may result from competition fall 
to the ground, by the verj'^ fact that competition no 
longer exists, and that under the corporation system 
there is no reason why the personal initiative of pri- 
vate functionaries should be greater than that of pub- 
lic functionaries, admitting, of course, that the latter 
are given the same advantages and the same liberty 
of action as the former. 

But, let us hasten to say, it would be limiting too 
narrowly the field of action of collectivism, if it were 
con lined to the old established industries that are 
concentrated, automatized, and reduced to that rou- 
tine, that uniformity of method, which made them 
suitable for oi)eration hy the imblic powers, as these 
are organized to-day. In pro])(^rti(>n as their orgauiza- 
t ion l)(»comes more perfect, the objections wMiich can 
l(*gitimately be made to their taking over other in- 
dustries will gradually lose their force. 

That in the pn^sent state of things, individual ope- 
ration and collrciiNc oi)eration i»res(»nt, from th<^ pt)lnt 
of view of production, their respective advantages and 



THE MEANS OF REALIZATION. 169 

disadvantages, appears all the more clearly if we con- 
trast the most divergent forms of these two modes of 
operation, the industry of the craftsman and the State 
monopoly. But while the advantages which properly 
belong to individual enterprise— and which still hold 
good in the industries of art and luxury— are decreas- 
ing with the progress of capitalist concentration and 
the extension of corporations, the advantages of col- 
lective operation are increasing with the progress of 
political and social organization. 

At hrst, we have to deal with the police-state, sud- 
denly transformed into an industrial or commercial 
organization, preserving all the brutality, all the 
grossness of its beginnings, pacing its employees al- 
most as badly as the worst slave-drivers of capital- 
ism and bringing to the operation of the social domain 
a solicitude not for social weilbeing but for revenue. 

From the moment, on the contrary, when the work- 
ing class begins to make itself felt in public affairs, 
"When politics and public service begin to be separated, 
when the industrial state wins its independence from 
the governmental state,— then collective operation, de- 
centralized and freed from red tape, gathers to itself 
little by little the advantages of management by in- 
dustrial corporations, yet preserving and developing 
all the advantages of common ownership. 

And finally, in a socialist commonw^ealth, social pro- 
ductivity would take on a new impulse the extent of 
which can only be measured by the more perfect co- 
ordination of forces, and by the fact that all, being 
at once producers and consumers, would have a com- 
mon interest to increase the sum of the product. 

4. Summary and Conclusion. 

The different processes of socialization which we 
have just passed in review— expropriation of the great 
industries, penetration of the State into new enter- 



I70 COLLKCTIVISM AND INDUSTKIAT. F.VOLUTION. 

prisos, co-oporativo association, with or without the 
intervention of the public powers — evidently do not 
exclude one another. It is more than likely, on the 
contrary, that socialized production, which seems to 
us the inevilable outcome of industrial evolution, will 
not be realiztnl in one uniform manner and by the 
api)llcatiou of one exclusive system, but rather l>y the 
combination of all measures, all efforts, all impulses, 
which converge to the same final end,— the suppres- 
sion of unearned incomes, the collective appropriation 
of the means of labor. 

As Sidney Webb observes in one of the interesting 
tracts i)ublished by the Fal)ian Society: **No reason- 
abh' Socialist thinks it possible for the State immedi- 
ately to take over the grocer's shops. The 'democrati- 
zation' of retail trade and of some other branches of 
industry, can, it has been triumphantly proved, be 
effected by the store and the 'wholesale,' where neither 
the national governuK^nt nor the local authority could 
yet venture to step in."* 

On tlie otlier hand, the most optimistic co-opt^ators 
are forced to recognize that the practical sphere of co- 
operation, however large it may be conceived to be, 
is very far from embracing all branches of production 
and exchange. 

Even in England, that promised land of the co- 
operators, municipal socialism is developing much 
more rapidly than co-operative organization. The cap- 
ital i'mi)l(\ved ])y the public autliorities in the single 
industry of gas-lighting is much more than all the 
common property of the 1,707 co-operative societies of 
tlic T'nited Kingdom.** 

♦Sidney Wobb: "English Proirross Towards Social Demoe- 
rnov." Fabian Tract No. ir». London: Fabian Society. I'TH 
Strand, W. C. 

♦•Tn 1«^nO. flic r-aj)ital invcs:tcd by tbc FncrlN!) mnnb'loalUlcs 
In th«' '.^as Indnstry reached $14.'^.0()0.000: tho capital belonLMn,!; 
to the co-operative societies, wholesale Inclnded, to JFli^'-^• 



THE MEANS OF REALIZATION. I7I 

To hope for the conquest of the great machinery of 
production by the private association of Uiborers, is 
to lull one's self and lull the working class with false 
hopes. Co-operation may prepare for socialism: it can 
never realize it. Nothing but the expropriation of the 
capitalist class, by acts of the collective will, can 
assure the complete emancipation of the producers. 

As for knowing how this expropriation will come 
about— gradually or suddenly, peaceably or forcibly, 
with indemnity or without indemnity— those are ques- 
tions which depend far less, unfortunately, upon our 
personal preferences than upon social combinations. 

Certainly, every right-minded man must desire, even 
were it against all hope— that the liberation of the 
workers may not cost humanity so much in blood and 
tears as did the civil wars and the international heca- 
tombs which marked the coming of the Third Estate. 
But, when one sees the blind, persistent, ferocious re- 
sistance which the privileged classes always oppose to 
the most modest claims of the lower classes, one can 
not but think of these words which Schiller puts Into 
the mouth of Wallenstein: 

"Large is the brain, but narrow is the world. 
Thoughts, each by each, may easily persist. 
But things in space clash rudely each on each, 
And where a new thing claims its place, another 
Must in its turn give way,— either of itself 
Or else expelled by force, for struggle reigns, 
And force it is that triumphs." 

This force then, this force that rules the world, the 
proletariat must conquer. The workers, rallying un- 
der the emblem of the International, must awaken 



000,000. For additional information, see Harrison on 
"Municipal Trading" (Economic Journal, June, 1900, p. 251). 
and Zeo, La Co-operation en 1898, (Averir social, Feb., r.XiO.) 



172 CoLI.KCriXIsM AM) INDl'STKIAL EVOLUTION. 

in those who still slocp the consciousness of thoir 
chiss interests, they must shatter by incessant propa- 
;::an(la \hv anc-ient discipline which imposes pasi^ive 
obedience* upon the armies, they must hold themselves 
with unalterable patience to the conquest of political 
power in all branches of jj^overnment. They must by 
a constant efft)rt over themselves, raise their intel- 
lectual and moral strength to the high level of their 
hopes, and they must prepare, by developing the free 
and spontaneous organization of the working class, 
generations which shall be ripe for the republican or- 
ganization of social labor. In a word, the socialist 
thought must penetrate all institutions, must filter into 
all brains, must dissolve all resistance. 

Even now, indcHMl. this conquest is going on, and by 
the actual confession of one of the most intelligent of 
its opponents.* socialism may appropriate the words 
which Tertullian, two centuries after the death of 
Jesus, addressed to the powers of expiring paganism: 
**We are but of yesterday and already we till all your 
country: your cities, your strong places, your towns, 
your assemblies, your armies even, the tribes, the 
decuries, the Palatine, the Senate, the forum: we 
leave you nothing but your temples." 

And even these temples begin to be deserted. 

*Vilfr(^ilo Parcto: T.e peril sociallste. (Jourual ties Econ- 
omlstes, 15 Mai, lUOO.) 



CHAPTER VI. 

OBJECTIONS. 

"The restraints on liberty, imposed by communism, 
would be liberty itself compared with the present 
condition of most of the beings belonging to the 
human race."— John Stuart Mill. 

**A11 men are created free and unequal. The aim 
of socialism is to maintain this natural inequality, and 
to draAA^ from it the greatest possible benetit."* Thus 
Grant Allen begins a charming and suggestive study, 
in w^hich he shows that by establishing an equal start, 
by suppressing the hereditary privileges which assure 
industrial and social leadership to so many mediocri- 
ties and incompetents, socialism, far from bringing 
men down to the same level, would on the contrary 
establish the pre-eminence of the strongest intellect- 
ually and morally. 

Moreover, by giving the possibility of a complete 
development to all, by rescuing from ignorance and 
poverty thousands of noble intellects which need only 
a little well-being and light to blossom out, by devel- 
oping, through a systematic organization, the general 
and the technical capacity of all workers it would 
carry to a maximum human Know^ledge, the Power 
of man over nature, and consequently Liberty, in its 
highest and fullest sense. 

Such being at once the aim and the necessary re- 
sults of the emancipation of the proletariat, one asks 
himself by what prodigious misunderstanding it can 
Ibe that men whose good faith seems above question, 



♦L'inegalite naturelle, dans rHumanite nouvelle. Juillet, 
11898. 



174 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

come to s(H» in collectivism a doctrine of extreme level- 
ing: aiul :i fo:-micla]»U' menace for the ri;jjhts of the 
imiivldiial. 

In his ••IMiication Smtimeutale," for example, Flaii- 
liert pictures one of his most reput^nant characters, 
the tutor Seuecal, as a sort of living synthesis of the 
collect ivist systems: "He knew Mably. Morelly, Four- 
ier, Saint-Simon, Cabet, Louis Blanc, th(» heavy cart- 
load of socialist writers, those who demand for hu- 
manity the e(]ual level of tlu» barracks, those who 
would wish to aiiHise it in a ])n)tliel or bend it over a 
count! r. and from tlic luixiurt' of all that, he had 
made for himself an ideal of a virtuous democracy, 
havin.-T the doubh^ aspect of a farm and a spinnine:- 
mill, a sort of American Sparta, where the individual 
would oxist only for society, more onmipotent, abso- 
lute, inrnllible and divine thnn tlK^ Lrrand Lamas and 
the Xr])Uchadnezz;irs." 

Here th<'n. formulated with as much vitror as in- 
justice—and it is useless to borrow from Spencer or 
Leroy- H(»aulieu similar citations less vividly expressed— ' 
here is tin' fundamentnl and the root objection that Is 
made to collectivism: ilie onmipotence of the State. 
th(» transformation of all the citiz(»ns into function- 
aries, slaves of the central poWtM\ and conseciuently. 
suppression of ijKlividual initiative: destruction of lib- 
erty, anniliilatiou of .m11 th:it makes the charm and 
the ]»c:ui:y of liCc. from the refinements of private 
luxury to :lie m:ii-ve].)iis unfoldinixs of art, too delicate* 
to <»xj)and in the .-itmospliere of barracks. 

Tin* exi>l:ination which we h.ive prlven of the essen- 
tial principles of coll(»ctivism makes it already clear 
that these critics are mistaken and an» restini; solely 
on a stui>id confusion of ideas b(*tween exploitation 
by the Siaie-employer. ill Its capitalist form, and the 
workim: of tlu' social iiilnM-itance ])y thi^ collectivity 
of the toilers. X(»vertheless, it mav be useful to in- 



OBJECTIONS. 175 

sist agaiu and to show once more that the socialist 
organization of labor— contrarj^ to the opinion current 
in bourgeois circles, would increase individual initia- 
tive, would powerfully favor the expansion of human 
liberty, and would give a prodigious impulse to all 
production, in the triple domain of industry, science 
and art. 

1. Socialism and Individual Initiative. 

The defenders of the present system, who maintain 
that a socialist organization of property and labor 
would result in un-nerving individual initiative and 
depressing productive energy by blunting the spur of 
personal interest, never fail to oppose to "the slave of 
the collectivist society" the free man, the peasant 
proprietor, the independent producer, all those who, 
working for themselves, have a direct and immediate 
interest in working as much as possible. 

Let us remark in the first place that this compari* 
son, even if it w^ere as advantageous as these people 
wish to make it out for the independent producers, is 
evidently not pertinent: the socialists, as a matter of 
fact, do not intend to separate labor from property 
when they are united, but, on the contrary, to unite 
them when they are separated; they aim at the ex- 
propriation of capitalist property alone, and they have 
no thought of imposing by constraint upon the holders 
of personal property any co-opration which these last 
would not desire. 

Only, they point out,— and capitalist concentration 
bears witness to the same effect— the inferiority of 
individual enterprises in most branches of production, 
in all industries which are intended to satisfy the 
needs which are most general and most extended. 

However brilliant they may be, the flowers of per- 
sonal initiative wither, like young plants at the foot 
of a great tree, from the moment when capitalist pro- 



176 COLLF.CTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL KVni.UTr>N'. 

duct ion, (l(»r()ini)osiii«j: work into fra^jmicntary ami nio- 
clianifal operations, n-chu-es professional capacity to 
the ininiimiin nnd leaves to the wajre- workers no 
other stimulus to labor than the fear of being dis- 
missed or fined when they work by the day, or of 
failing to gain what is indispensable to existence 
when they work ])y the piece. 

At this stage of development, initiative is concen- 
trated, as well as property and priKiuction. * It re- 
sides almost wholly in the person of the capitalist, as 
long as the latter exercises by himself, without dele- 
gating it to wage-workers, the direction of the enter- 
prise. He has all the profits, but he has all the re- 
sponsibilities, and if it happens too often that he 
a])uses the sovereign powers that he possesses, still he 
could not, without disregarding the reality of things, 
be considered as a parasite pure and simple. 

"The emplo3'er, in the present economic order," says 
Charles Gide, *'is not a simple dealer in hand-work, 
he organizes that hand-work, this being a very im- 
portant form of i>ro(luction: he assigns its task, he 
makes it i)rodu(H» the maximum of useful efifect, and 
it is not only hand-work, it is all the scattered factors 
of production, capital, land, building-sites— which 
often do not belong to him or belong to him only in 
part— that he groups in his hand and makes con- 
verge toward a detluite end. To foresee wants, to 
make production tally with consumption, to decide 
the way in which the labor and the capital of a coun- 
try should be (uuployed— that is. properly speaking, 
tht' function of the entrepreneur.* 

That this function must necessarily be fulfilled ^s 
beyond doubt. Rut we have seen that more and more. 
Inspired by the example of the landed proprietors, 

•(^hnrlos (;i«lo: l*rinripos (Voconomic politiqiio. p. .S77. 
(Paris, La rose, 181>6.) 



OBJECTIONS. 177 

the capitalists are delegating the employer's function 
to hired managers. 

As early as 1836, A. Ure, the Pindar of English man- 
ufacturers, as Marx called him, declared that "the 
soul of our industrial system" was not the capitalists 
but their managers. Much more is this the case now 
that the impersonal corporation has invaded most 
branches of industry. 

Certainly at the origin of every fortune, of every 
enterprise, we still find an act of initiative, an individ- 
ual effort, honest or dishonest, but once this fortune 
and this enterprise are established, they develop by 
acquired force, by the povrer of capitalist accumula- 
tion, by the exploitation of the labor and the abilities 
of others, and above all when they pass into the hands 
of heirs, the personal activity of the holders of capi- 
tal is at last completely replaced by the bureaucratic 
functioning of the impersonal corporation. 

Now it is chiefly when this stage is reached that 
collective appropriation presents the maximum of 
advantages, and that on the other hand people are 
generally ready to agree in admitting that private 
enterprises have no necessary superiority over public 
enterprises. 

"Whatever, if left to spontaneous agency," says 
John Stuart Mill, "can only be done by joint stock 
associations, will often be as well, and sometimes 
better done, as far as the actual work is concerned, 
by the State. Government management is, indeed, 
proverbially jobbing, careless, and ineffective, but so 
likewise has generally been joint-stock management. 
The directors of a joint-stock company, it is true, are 
always shareholders; but also the members of a gov- 
ernment are invariably taxpayers; and in the case of 
directors, no more than in that of government, Is their 
proportional share of the benefit of good management, 
equal to the interest they may possibly have in mis- 



l/J^ ' • 'I l.ECTIVISM AND INIM'S TRIAI. KVOT^T' I ION. 

iij;iun;;enuMit, I'vcu without liH-koniiii:: 11k' interest (»f 
their ease."* 

In short, in the present eapitiilist environment, State 
industries, however vicious their organization, are 
not ordinarily inferior to the private companies, from 
the industrial point of view. The latter carry off 
1h(» palm only from the commercial point of view: 
from the moment when the ni^cessities of competition 
make it necessary to chase after customers, to orp:an- 
ize a constant campaign of advertising, to achieve 
prodigies of skill or lavish treasures of intrigue to 
preserve a lino of customers or capture that of a 
rival, the State shows itself decidedly inferior to pri- 
vate corporations. 

Let us rtMuark, how^'ver. that this inferiority, very 
serious wlu^n it comes to realizing a maximum of 
profits, presents only a very relative importance when 
it comes to assuring a maximum of advantages to 
consumers. Now we know that under a socialist 
regime, social labor would have for its aim, no longer 
the production of exchange values, but the produc- 
tion of use values for the direct wants of the produc- 
ers themselves. And if even now the State monopo- 
lies, in so far as they are organisms of production do 
not suffer by comparison with private companies, it 
will be eas3' for us to establish, a fortiori, that a so- 
cialist organization of labor, far from depressing pro* 
duc-tive energy or weakening individual initiative, 
would stimulate them infinitely more than the system 
now in force. 

To show this, we will tirst take the point of view 
of the labor of execution: then that of the labor of 

direction. 

In the first place, as regards the labor of execution, 
it goes without sayinir that all the means employed 

•r*rlnflp!» s of Political Fronomy. Hook V.. ('hapt^r xl. 



OBJECTIONS. 179 

to-day to increase the product— prizes, paying l)y the 
piece, worlv by contract, etc., would very easily tind 
equivalents under the socialist system, if it were 
necessary to resort to such proceedings. 

These methods, moreover, can have but a limited 
application. Work by contract and paying by the 
piece, particularly, in most industries, are blocked 
either by technical obstacles or by resistance justified 
by too frequent abuses. Wage by the day thus re- 
mains the dominant form, and since this is so, every 
one must recognize that in capitalist-enterprises the 
manual laborer, a simple machine for producing sur- 
plus-value, has no other motive than the fear of hunger 
and of punishments. Accordingly he works, as a gen- 
eral rule, just enough to avoid being fined or thrown 
out at the door. But it is especially in branches of 
production where supervision is difficult— in agricul- 
tural labor, for example — that the deplorable conse- 
quences of the present system, from the point of view 
of production, are seen in the clearest light. 

''Putting things at their best," says Piret, "the day 
laborer can scarcely be expected to display a greater 
activity than will suffice to avoid reproof. This mini- 
mum of activity becomes general among day laborers, 
in proportion to the watchfulness and the customary 
requirements of their masters, and ends by passing so 
far into a habit that it is accepted as a rule. As for 
the domestic on wages, it is worse still: having no 
fear of being discharged from one day to the next, 
except in the case of some exceptional fault, paid ac- 
cording to his time of service, he is not materially in- 
terested in doing the greatest amount of work possi- 
ble in a given time; for his part, to occupy himself 
with a slowness calculated merely to avoid too violent 
reproaches, is too often his only fine of conduct: con- 
sequently instead of accomplishing his task with ac- 



l8o » ui.Li.* nVISNf AN'P IXni^STRIAT. EVoLUTIuN. 

(iviiy aud iutelligeucc, lie contents hinisolf with filling 
up his time more or less indolently."* 

To be present at such a spectacle, moreover, it 19. 
not necessary to ^o into the country. Look around 
you when any work of repair or decoration is beinir 
done at your home. See with what majestic slowness 
this i)ainter waves his brush, with what morbidezza 
he sings his romance while he puts stone-color on the 
front of 3'our house, and you will understand with all 
the clearness of vision given by injured personal inter- 
est, just what results from the absence of personal in- 
terest or any liiLrher interest in those who are working 
for the account of an employer. 

Do you wish now for the counterpart of this familiar 
picture? Do you wish to get an idea of what would 
be the zeal for work in a society which interested all 
its members, morally and materially, in the common 
welfare? Go into one of our socialist bakeries, at 
Brussels, for example, into one of these bread facto- 
ries, spacious and clean, provided with the latest im- 
proved machinery, giving in one way a present vision 
of the workshops of the future. You v/ill (Ind in it 
free men without any other supervision than their 
mutual control. They earn two dolliirs a day,* they 
work but eight hours, while the "white miners" of 
the small bakeries work in dark cellars twelve, thir- 
teen aud fourteen hours for starvation wages,-but 
during their eight hours the socialist workers give the 
maximum of useful effort, labor with enthusiasm, and 
joyfully accomplish for themselves and for their 
brothers the modernized miracle of the multiplication 
of the loaves. 



♦PIrot: Tralle crEronomie nirale, II., 187 and 18i> 
(Bruxolle^. 1S90). 

♦It should ho ohse-rved that rent, clothing and incidentals 
are choripcr by one-half in Brussels than in Thlcairo, and 
that even food'is supplied at less than Amerioan retail prices 
to members of the socialist co-operatives.— Translator. 



OBJECTIONS. l8l 

Is not this tangible proof— living proof— that from 
the point of view of the labor of execution, the col- 
"ctivist system, that is to say, speaking delinitely, co- 
operation generalized, universalized, would be incom- 
parably superior to the present system? 

But then there is, we are told, the labor of direction. 
^yhere will you find, to put at the head of social enter- 
prises, the men of initiative, the captains of industry, 
vrho direct the capitalist enterprises to-day? 

The ansvv^er is very simple: without counting the 
new capacities that would be developed by complete 
education, those which exist at present would still be 
there; the^^ would remain what they are, and if it 
were necessary to employ the means that are used at 
present to stimulate their zeal, there is most certainly 
no motive which would prevent resorting to them un- 
der a new regime. 

All that a tru ^t can do— bj^ a decentralized organiza- 
tion, by a share in its profits, by prospects of ad- 
vancement—to increase the initiative and the responsi- 
bility of its managers or its officers, we have seen that 
the collectivity could do equally well for its own. 

But, let us hasten to say, the possibility of main- 
taining these inequalities in remuneration does not in 
any way imply their necessity. Everything indicates, 
on the contrary, that in a socialist commonwealth 
they would constantly tend to diminsh, if not to dis- 
appear, because they would cease to be indispensable 
to obtain from the intellectual laborers the maximum 
of initiative and of activity. 

That it is otherwise to-day is an easy thing to un- 
derstand. "Worli is done, above ail, for money, be- 
cause money is, above all, that which confers social 
distinction, which gives security and independence, 
which constitutes the sole means of obtaining most of 
the satisfactions of life, even intellectual ones; but 
when once this metallic royalty is abolished, when 



l82 COLLKCTIVISM A\l) TXDUSTklAL EVOLUTION. 

collective property drives well-l)ein.c: of mind and body 
to all, the love of ni(nu\v will ^Mve place to other mo- 
tives, pecuniary inten-st will fade away before other 
and less dc^^radin.i: forms of personal interest. 

It can not he doubUMJ. indeed, that and>ition. tlK* 
desire to occupy tlic hi.Lrlicst i)lares in the hierarchy of 
labor, would play an increasin^jc part, in proportion 
as the strure^*^' ^<>i' material existence lost its l)itter- 
oess. 

And on the other hand, it ^vould be slandering hu- 
man nature to overlook the importance that the purely 
.•iltruistic factors would take in a social state where 
interests would be unified instead of being antagonis- 
tic. Is not this shown even now in the socialist co- 
operatives, where we see men like Anseele and many 
others more obscure, but not less devoted, contenting 
themselves with workin.ixmen's wages for accomplish- 
ing marvels of energy, of intelligence and sometimes 
of commercial genius which were needed to create in 
Bi'lgium th(» powerful organism of co-operation? 

Those are exceptions, piM-liaps you will say, and it 
is not right to figure on exceptions, to count on the 
self-abnegation and the disinterestedness of the apos- 
tles and founders of a new religion, to accomplish the 
current work of industrial production and of the dl* 
rection of social la]M)r. So be it; let us take then an- 
other example. 

It will be granted us, no doubt, that the professional 
soldiers, the officers of our armies, do not represent a 
class whose morality, disinterestedness and spirit of 
sacrifice are sensibly in excess of the average of other 
classes. But tell them that the country is threatened, 
that the honor of the flag is at stake, that war is d^ 
clared: they rush to the frontier, and. to a man. they 
are ready to give their lives for that tia--. tOv that 
country, for that war— too often odious an<l unjust. 

Now, if such sentiments can have such effects, caa 



OBJECTIONS. 183 

we doubt for a moment that the same energy, the same 
resolution, the same devotion would be found as well 
among the officers and the generals of the industrial 
armies for their work of life, as among the officers and 
the generals of the armies of to-day, for their work of 
death? And if so many men are found ready to sac- 
rifice their lives when it comes to sending lead into 
their fellow men, would there not be as many volun- 
teers or even more, when it was a matter of giving 
them bread? 

Of course we are well aware that the warlike ex- 
citement of a moment and the permanent, peaceful 
activity of a life's career are two different things, but 
let us not forget that the action of the moral factors 
whose power we have just been showing would come 
as an addition to, not as a substitute for, all the other 
motives of a lower order, which would still be put in 
play under a collectivist regime. 

So we have the right to conclude that for labor of 
direction as w^ell as labor of execution, individual in- 
itiative, and consequently social productivity, would 
have everything to gain and nothing to lose if the 
struggle for existence between men were transformed 
into their association for the struggle against na- 
ture. 

2. Socialism and ILiberty. 

"Socialism and human liberty are incompatible." 
How many variations have been elaborated on this 
theme, from the rather heavy pamphlets of Eugene 
Richter to those fine and exquisite "Lettres de Ma- 
laisie," in which Paul Adam describes to us an Icarian. 
society, shut up in Insulinde, and which indeed works 
beautifully, but where liberty exists no more except 
deep within the heart of an old Spanish diplomat. 

Perhaps some one may remember that first of May 
number of "Figaro" which caricatured very pictur- 



184 COLLECIIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 

o.<(in(»ly ilio throe ^vot\{ social sta;,^*s of the past, tho 
present and the future: a])S()Iut(' inonareliy, bour^(H»is 
rejniMic and colkH-tivist society. 

Justifyin^^ himself, perhaps, by \\w fact that tho 
Fiji cannibals desijxnate their Iniinan eata])les under 
tho name of '*long pork," the author carried over his 
trilo«:y into the world of pigs. 

Absolute monarchy was pictured in front of an im- 
mense trough as an enormous boar, span'^led with 
decorations, proudly crowned with a royal diadem, 
and sitting majestically in the midst of a spacious en- 
closure, which other piirs, not so fat, defended against 
tin* contingent attacks of the meager- rabble of ple- 
beian pigs. 

Then came the bourgeois regime, the regime of lais- 
s« z fa ire, every one for himself: the gates open, the 
fences down, and the porker populace rushing toward 
the royal trough, the largest pushing away the small- 
est, the strongest crushing the weaknest. 

Finally, contrasting by its calm symmetry with the 
furors of this tumult, came the State of the future, a 
row of pigs of equal size, curling their little tails of 
equal length, and peaceably aligned before equal 
troughs separated by uniform enclosures. 

Perhai)s if they happened to cast their eyes on this 
pictur(\ some of the people whose troughs were empty 
may have reflected that at all events, rather than the 
royal monopoly or th(* uneijual cotnliat of the lalssez 
faire, they prefeiTcd the social organization whi(*h at 
least would solve the question of the stomach. And if 
they reflected furtln^r, they must have said to them- 
selves that the most beautiful liberties In tho world, 
so long as this question shall not be solved, are 
summed up for the proletariat in one alone,— the lib- 
erty to starv(\ 

To b<' fre(\ in fact, a constitution is not (Miough, 
property is needed, individual or collective. He who 



OBJECTIONS. 185 

has nothing can do nothing. The workingman who 
does not find in some real right that "piece of consti^ 
tution" which Lassalle preferred to all the written 
charters, remains, politically and sociall3% in absolute 
dependence on the purchasers of his labor power. 

To appreciate the sum of liberty at his disposal, 
please think of what happens on election day, when 
he exercises his "sovereign rights." 

In France, where the secrecy of the ballot is insuffi- 
ciently guaranteed, how often we have seen, in the 
industrial centers, hundreds of workers dropping their 
employers' tickets into the electoral urn, under the 
supervision of their foreman and the menace of en- 
forced idleness! 

In Belgium, where the legal machinery protects the 
liberty of the voter more effectively, the sovereign 
people possesses at least the right of concealing itself. 

It is behind an isolating screen that he marks with 
a black point the official ballots handed him by the 
election officers. Hide yourself well, comrade! No 
one will see you, no curate, nor employer, nor magis- 
trate. Hide yourself as if you were about to commit 
a crime. There you are, alone with your conscience. 
You are free, once every four years! 

But this minute of liberty — and it is a precious thing 
—is it not in itself the proof of a perpetual slavery? 
Does it not show clearly that in the present state of 
things, only those are free to express their opinions, 
to make public their political preferences, to confess 
openly their philosox)hieal or religious beliefs, who 
have what is called an independent position, who find 
in personal property the guarantee of their liberty? 

Consequently, the only means of assuring liberty 
to all is to give property to all, and under the system 
of the great industry, the only means of giving prop- 
erty to all is to socialise the means of production and 
exchange. 



l86 (I ii.TJCi^riVISM AND IXDl'STRIAL FA'OLUTIOX. 

Object iou is made, it is true, that the remedy would 
be worse tliau the disease; it is asserted that individ- 
ual lilxM-ty would suffer even more from jjopular sov- 
enM.irnty based on collective property than from cax)i- 
talist sovereignty based on private property. And to 
maintain this, appeal is made in turn to the interest 
of the citizens as producers and as consumers. 

From the i)oint of view of the producers, to begin 
with, ^^'e may safely say of the workers who are to- 
day attached capitalist industries and who would 
come to be occupied in social enterprises, that in the 
matter of liberty, they have nothing to lose but their 
chains, and that if the State-employer kept its pres- 
ent form, even its despotism, tempered by the grow- 
ing influence of democracy, would not be harder to 
endure than the despotism of the employers of private 
industry. 

Let us suppose now that the collective system be- 
comes general: that by reason of the fusion of classes, 
the authoritative functions of the State are reduced to 
the minimum; that in the public industries, decentral- 
ized and self-regulating, every one takes part in the 
common Avork of production. How can it be maintained 
that the liberty of the producers w^ould be diminished. 
]>ecause they would have become their own masters 
and their own employers? 

Still this is insisted. We read of the deplorable sit- 
uation of the worker driven from the collective shops, 
smitten with industrial excommunication, perhaps for 
secret reasons, and tramping the pavement without 
being able to find work anywhere.* But is it not 
])lain that this is precisely what these excommunica- 
tions are producing every day under the capitalist 
system, while they would become morally impossible 

♦See Herbert Spencer's eisay. ''The Coming SlaveiT." 



OBJECTIONS. 187 

in a society where labor, being a duty for all, would 
necessarily be a right for all? 

Just as it would be inconceivable that in our pres- 
ent society the State, acting as operator of the rail- 
Vv'ays, should refuse to carry a traveler, it is absurd 
to suppose that in a collectivist state, they should re^ 
fuse to employ a citizen. And if one were to say that 
exclusion from one social workship would necessarily 
imply exclusion from all the others, it is almost like 
saying that under a system of municipal autonomy, 
the moment one town refuses to elect an instructor— 
on account of his political opinions, for example— 
that instructor is doomed to receive the same welcome 
from the other towns of the country. 

In terms full of equal apprehension we are told of 
the restraints to individual liberty which would result 
from the regulation of social labor. =■•' But again, how 
can any one fail to see that this regulation— the writ- 
ten formula of whicli is imposed as a protective guar- 
antee by state law upon factory rules— exists quite 
as much under the capitalist system? 

Absolute liberty of labor is possible only in individ- 
ual enterprises, if indeed we give the name "liberty of 
labor" to submission to natural laws alone, a sub- 
mission all the more complete as labor is more iso- 
lated. From the moment, on the contrary, when labor, 
whatever its nature, requires the merging of the indi- 
vidual into a complete whole, his liberty necessarily 
undergoes restrictions. The chief of the clinic and 
the college professor who keep regular hours are re- 
stricted in the same sense as the manual laborer who 
submits to factory rules. 

This regulation, indispensable to the proper carry- 
ing on the work, will evidently not be suppressed by 
socialism. Only, instead of being the exclusive and 



♦Spencer, in work quoted above. 



I8J^ COLLECTIVISM AND INDCS'fRLAL KVOLUTION. 

personal work uf the liuad ui' tho enterprise, with in- 
terests opposed to those ol* his workmen, it would be- 
coni(^ an expression of the will el' ihe workers them- 
selves, liavin.ir the same rights and the same inter- 
ests. 

Under these conditions, is it not evident that this 
re^'ulation, made by (»very one in tlie interest of every 
one, would protect the liberty of the producers l)etter 
than the present regulation, which is imposed upon 
every one in the interest of a few? Moreover, the 
reduction of the hours of labor resulting from a more 
equitable distribution of tasks and a more active par- 
ticipation of all citizens in social work would give all 
the most inestimable of liberties: the privilege of 
working to live instead of living to work, the right 
to preserve leisure enough for voluntary occupations 
and to taste at the end of the labor day those joys 
of family or social life which are implacably denied 
to-day to the immense majority of manual labor- 
ers.* 

We believe we have thus shown that from the point 
of view of the producers, collectivism, by suppressing 
the freedom of exploitation, would give birth to the 
freedom of labor. But, let us not forget, there is still 
another ])()int of vi(*w. Appeal is made to the interest 
of the consumers, of the public, of the citizens in 
general. 

For them especially is the fear, real or affected, of 
the omnipotence of the collective will. 

What would become of the liberty of the press, of 
the lilxTty of the home, of the free determination of 
v.ants. in a social state whcn-e the collectivity, dis- 
posing at its will of all products and all services, 
could ofllcially boycott the minorities that proved re- 
fractory under its guidance? And solior people point 

♦Soo Kniitskv: n.r SozlallJiinns unci dlo Ff^niolt. Dae 
ErfiirttT Pr«)gr;niiin. pp. ir»« et sfHj. (Stuttgart. ISIVJ.) 



OBJECTIONS. 189 

out to US, wUhout a smile, the unfortunate citizens of 
the State of the Future, condemned to read official 
newspapers exclusively, to lodge all their lives in the 
same apartment of the same phalanstery, and to get 
their food from the same kitchen as the other inhab- 
itants of their district. 

*'In a socialist State," exclaimed a promising young 
liberal at an electoral meeting not long ygo, ''we 
should all have to wear coats of a cut designated by 
the government." 

**But"— interrupted a workingman, quite poorly 
dressed, who did not seem frightened beyond measure 
at this prospect— ''are you not a firm believer in free 
education, secular and compulsory?" 

"Certainly!" 

"Weil, then, why do you find it so deplorable that 
the State determines the cut of our garments, when 
you consider it quite natural that it attend to the in- 
tellectual shaping of our children? Whatever is ca- 
pable of educating is amply capable of dressing and 
feeding also." 

To this direct and personal argument, our liberal 
made no reply, but no doubt the answer will be made 
for him that the omnipotence of the State in the mat- 
ter of education would be no better than the omnipo- 
tence of society in the matter of food or clothing. 
We agree perfectly, and without losing time in pro- 
testing against this absurd idea that the socialization 
of the means of labor would result in compelling citi- 
zens to wear the same uniform, or to share the same 
dish— as in the Carmagnole— we should be foremost in 
saying that, it collectivism would necessarily result in 
Increasing the powers of the governing State, in 
strengthening the state of the policeman, in favoring 
the arbitrary intervention of the State in private lifo 
and in personal consumption, it would really not be 



190 COlJ.Kc riVIsM ANT) INDTSTRIAL KVOLUTION. 

worth wliilc to suhstitulc collect ivo tyranuy for cap!- 
talist tyranny. 

Tluis, wc have anii)ly insisted npon tbo imperative 
ne(Ml of different iatin.LT iho industrial State from tlio 
political State, of assnrin^^ the complete self-re.u:nla- 
lion of the economic organization as opposed to the 
political organization of society. For as long as the 
(cm fusion between these two domains continues, a 
government may— as every day provc^s— abuse, for the 
sake of its prejudices or its political inten^sts, the 
power arising from the fact of its operating public 
services. 

TIius, to cite a single example, in our own constitu- 
tional Belgium, where the liberty of the press is sup- 
posed to be absolute, the minister of railways as- 
sumes to himself the right of forbidding the sale of 
socialist publications in the railway stations and other 
places under his control. 

It should be added, however, that if this same min- 
ister, instead of this annoyance of no great praeti<^-al 
importance, vcuitured to make a more serious attack 
upon the liberties of the citizens, if he refused, for' ex- 
ample, to transport or to distribute through the mails 
a certain class of journals, he would inevitably be 
overthrown by a general uprising of public opinion. 

Even now it may be said that the customs and tra- 
ditions of liberty are strong enough to offer an effect- 
ive resistance to the abuse of power. 

Much more would this l)e so in a more equitable 
social state and one governed by the fundamental 
distinction which we have explained between the 
government of men and the administration of things. 
All the more is this true sine? the importance of the 
governmental form designed especially to maintain 
the capitalist order would go on decreasing m propor- 
tion to the development of the new order. 

Under these conditions we ask all sincere nu'u iv> 



OBJECTIONS. 191 

ronsider how liberty could be compromised hy tlio 
fact of an increasing number of self-regulating pu])lic 
services being operated socially instead of being loft 
to the operation of private parties. 

Even now, is the public less free when it is traveling 
on the State railway than on a private one? Is it less 
free when it consumes municipal water, or turns on 
municipal gas, instead of using the water or burning 
the gas of a private company? Is it not perfectly 
evident, on the contrary, that the socialization of cap 
italist m.onopolies by the citizens of a democracy is 
the very condition of real liberty? 

Of course, we do not claim that every extension of 
the public domain necessarily results in :in increase of 
liberty. There is no doubt, on the contrary, that acts 
of collective appropriation accomplished by rhe ruling 
classes in their own interest may result in the liscal 
monopolies of the European monarchies, or else in 
the paternal communism of the Jesuits of Paraguay, 
• or, again, in the despotic collectivism of that Chinese 
emperor, which has been so long the delight of th(^ 
bourgeois press. But, those who argue from such 
examples against democratic socialism, should not 
forget that, to reach its end, to transform, in the in- 
terest of all, capitalist property into social property, 
the proletariat will have to display such a power of 
organization, to realize such moral and intellectual 
progress, that it becomes absurd to suppose that gen- 
erations growing up in such a school would, for a 
moment, endure any restraints upon their full and 
complete liberty. 

3. Socialism and Art. 
We have seen the most passive among the capital- 
ists reproach socialism with its weakening of indi- 
vidual initiative; we have seen the most arbitrary ot 
employers fighting it in the name of human liberty. 



192 COLLECTIVISM AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTK^N. 

It is iliiis (luito to 1)0 oxpoctod that, in tlieir turn, the 
most unaesthetic of the bourgeois should take up tho 
dofouco of the artists n.irainst tlio "ijrnoraut majors, " 
a.ixninst tlio •'inodcrn barbarians." 

But, let us hnstt^n to admit. th(\v do not remain 
alone. rhilosoi)hers, inventors, and scientists lilve A. 
r<>nille(\ als(> manifest decided apprehensions for tho 
futui-e reserved for ])oets, artist and metaphysicians 
in a "society of materialistic collectivists." 

V\'ill they not be bnnished from the Republic, and 
that t()(> Avitliout crowns <•!* tlo\v(»rs? And admittin;^' 
tliat m(»rcy be shown to them, **in what way will the 
collectivist society or;j:auize the philosophic lab(U' 
wliich deals with the first principles and the linal 
ends of existence, includinc: even 'the beyond?* Will 
it be possible to establish re.urulntions for mental labor, 
to impose upon it the ei.i^ht-hour day, to command 
A'ictor Hup) to liave bis poetic inspiration at seven 
o'clock in tlu^ mDrnlni? and to take a recess at nine; 
And how will this labor be estimated? The thou.crht 
of a man of crenius has not alwnys an appreciabh^ 
(H'onomic value. When (^alileo discovered the satel- 
lites of Jupiter, could a collectivist administration 
have pruessed that these satellites Avould serve to 
make more exact maps and to avert shipwre<*k for 
the ships of commerce? Leisure, even idleness, how- 
over odious these thincrs may be (in other people) to 
manual laborers, have their use apd their social neces- 
sity, along with their disadvanta,f:res. If every one 
were bent over the plow, o'r the anvil, there would 
be none of thosQ dreamers, none of those so-called 
idlers whom we know as Socrates, Archimedes, or 
T.aplnce, nor nny like Dante. Shakespeare, or Ln mar- 
tine.*'* 

In short, accord iuLr to our author, a socialist conv 



♦Foiiinpo: Lo travail mrnral er Ip- oollpotlvisme matoii.il- 
isto. (Roviip des Deux-Mondes, ler Mai, ItKiQ, pp. 1121 et VS2.) 



OBJECTIONS. 193 

munity, wholly occupied in planting cabbages, would 
care very little about cultivating roses. Material pro- 
duction would absorb all its energies. Every one 
would have the necessities without doubt, but no one 
would have any superfluity. Now, it is superfluity of 
riches which enables artists to live. It is unearned in- 
comes which give leisure to the poets, and, conse- 
quently, to suppress capitalist appropriation w^ould 
be to limit aesthetics in future to the platitudes of 
official ail. 

To answer these objections it is important, in the 
first place, to get rid of a fundamental misunder- 
standing. 

All socialists, even materialisls, would admit with 
Fouillee this commonplace truth that "the collectivist 
authority which should assume to organize mental 
labor on economic and administrative plans, just as 
it w^ould organize manual labor, would dry up the 
springs of all invention and of all social progress, 
economic progress included." We only regret that 
Fouillee does not agree w^ith us in recognizing that 
this absurd idea never entered the head of a single 
socialist theorist. 

At all events, let the readers of the Revue des Deux- 
Mondes be reassured: the Victor Hugos of the future 
will not be subjected to factory regulations; the Shake- 
speares of the twentieth century may . still, if they 
have no better means of existence, earn their living by 
going on the stage of the little theaters frequented 
by sailors. Everything permits us to hope that the 
astronomers, the poets, the mathematicians and the 
philosophers w^hen they live under the socialist regime , 
will not be imprisoned like Galileo, exiled like Dante, 
massacred like Archimedes, or poisoned like Socrates. 
But really, to give a more serious answer to a more 
serious objection, it did not require light from a phil- 
osopher so great as Fouillee to make the most obtuse 



194 COLLI CTIVISM AND INMM'STRIAL IsVoLT'TIUX. 

culled ivist uiukTstaiul that the tirst need of art aud 
phil<)S()i>liy is liberty. The whole question is to ascer- 
taiu wlu'lhi'r the poets, the philosophers, all those, in 
a word, who giv(» themselves to labors of no immedi- 
ate practical vahie, would have no less real li])erty in 
A socialist community than in the present state of 
thln^xs. 

Now it will be easily seen, in the first place, that 
if there ever was an environment hostile to the free 
development of art and of philosophical speculation, it 
is uudenia])ly the bourp:eois society, wholly governed 
by considerations of money and of interest. 

If in spite of all, art flourishes on the ruins of the 
past, on the vague fields of the present encumbered 
with ruins and with gross materials for construction, 
on the mountain tops already bathed with the light 
of dawn, from which the future may be descried, it 
is because its impulse is as irresistible as the develop- 
ment of the germs in the cracks of old walls, in the 
chinks of the pavements, in the meager soil of the 
most unfertile lands. But, in spite of its invincible 
vitality, aesthetic production.— and the same thing 
may be said of philosophic ])roduction— is fatally sen- 
sitive to the unfavorable conditions of existence which 
surround it. 

For the immense majority of men. even for the 
leaders of bourgeois thought, aesthetic pleasure is 
nothing but an amusement, a distraction, an enjoy- 
ment of luxury. ''What characterizes it.'' says Spen- 
cer, *'is that it is not united to the vital functions: In 
other words, it brings us no specific advantages: the 
pleasure of sounds and colors, even that of s\ibtile 
odors, springs from a simple exercise of one or the 
other organs without visible advantage: it has in it 
something of contem])lation and of leisure: it is an 
enjoym(^nt of luxury." 

And naturallv in a social state where most of the 



OBJECTIONS. 195 

individuals have to devote their entire effort to the 
winning of their daily bread, this enjoyment of luxury 
remains the privilege of the smallest of minorities. 

In the time of Louis XIV, it was especially the peo- 
ple of the court. Later, it was the "best people'* of 
the aristocratic drawing rooms. To-day, it is almost 
exclusivelj^ the bourgeoisie, or rather that minute frac- 
tion of the bourgeoisie which does anything beside 
extracting surplus value from the proletariat. 

If we deduct the too infrequent intellectual pleas- 
ures which the collectivity even now puts at the dis- 
posal of all, and which, for that matter, most manual 
laborers have as yet no opportunity of tasting, we 
might say indeed that the bourgeoisie alone, the rich, 
or comfortable class, possesses the time and the money 
necessary to frequent the libraries and the theaters, 
and especially to procure the books, the statues, the 
pictures and other exchange values in which beauty is 
embodied. And, thanks to this intellectual and mate- 
rial monopoly, it alone disposes of the power of dictat- 
ing its preferences either directly or through the State 
upon all those artists who having no other means of 
existence are condemned to please this class under 
the penalty of dying of hunger. 

This fact explains at once the mediocrity of those 
who submit and the exasperation of those who revolt, 
for the trait common to all artists who can, thanks 
-to their personal resources, or else by imposing upon 
themselves severe privations, achieve a relative inde- 
pendence is their profound aversion for the rule of the 
bourgeoisie and for bourgeois Ideals. 

There are some who draw from this aversion the 
very indignation which makes great works: like Bal- 
zac writing his Comedie Humaine, Flaubert spitting 
his contempt upon the conquerors of June, 1848, Victor 
Hugo chastising the second Empire, Zola publishing 
Germinal. 



i9^» c'oLLi:^ ri\ ISM .\Ni» imu-iuiai. i:\ oi.utI' n. 

OiLcrs, ill despair over the prt'sont, take 'rcfui^L' in 
th(» ivory tower of the poets, slui;, witli Mallariiie, of 
the Latiu degeneracy, croueli at all the windows from 
whirh they may turn their back on life, or else looking 
back over tlie past demand of the .ureat centuries of 
Christianity the inspiration which they no lonj^er find 
in the present world. 

Still others, and these the greatest in number, seek- 
ing support in the souls of the common people which 
are awakening, announce with Wagner, the allied 
triumph of Art and devolution. But whatever the 
beauty, whatever the sublimity even of their works, 
they are and can only be precursors as j^et. Before 
a nt»w art can blossom, broad and great as humanity 
itself, humanity must know the peace that follows 
strife, the leisure that comes after work, the union of 
minds and of hearts after the conflicts which rend 
them to-day. Periods of transition, of criticism, of 
revolution like ours, can only produce Avorks of pain 
and ineomi)leteness. 

That which was is no more, that which shall be 
is not yet. The reality mars the dream. Those who 
are laying the foundations of the new social order 
have scarcely time to think of other things, and too 
often, the artists who speak to crowds still enthralled 
wait vainly for a responsive echo. But when the 
emancipated proletariat shall live a life really human, 
when all the toilers shall have culture enough to 
bring sensations of art within their reach, when all 
shall have after their day's labor those hours of leis- 
ure^ which Fouillee well says are a **social necessity," 
then and then only aesthetic pleasure will cease to be 
an enjoymc^nt of luxury, and will become a common 
need to all the memlxM's of the community: then and 
then only, great works will ])e born in perfect beauty 
from the fruitful union of the ''individual creator, 



I 



.97 

sure of being understood, and the pulsing multitude 
sure of understanding him. 

*'What is art indeed," as George Sand admirably 
says, ^'without the hearts and minds upon which to 
pour it? A sun which would shed its rays and give 
life to nothing." 

What will it not be, on the contrary, when whole 
nations shall open their eyes to its light, and shall 
bear in their humblest labors some reflection of its 
splendor ? 

Objection is made, it is true, that the material con- 
ditions for aesthetic development will be lacking in 
a social state where the artists, deprived of the re- 
sources that individual property may give them, will 
find no nlore protectors, bourgeois or princes, whose 
private luxury contributes to their support. 

The objection lacks little of being ridiculous coming 
from the admirers of bourgeois society, that alma 
mater of intellectual laborers. Must we remind them 
to what expedients most of those laborers must re- 
sort to obtain that morsel of daily bread which Ber- 
lioz used to eat flavoring it with raisins, at the foot 
of the statue of Henry IV? Schiller was a professor 
of history. Balzac received a few pitiful thousand 
francs for the ten thousand pages of his Comedie Hu- 
maine. Wagner, before he met Louis of Bavaria, was 
reduced to writing an accompaniment for La Favorite 
"for two brass cornets." Beethoven, at the end 
of his life, says in a letter addressed to his pupil Ries: 
*'This sonata has been composed under very painful 
circumstances, for it is sad to be obliged to write for 
bread. That is where I am now." And among the 
great creators the immense majority of those who 
did not live in the darkest misery, gathered their re- 
sources either from some profession wholly foreign 
to their art, or from sinecures, or pensions, or from 
the favor, always long delayed, of the public. 



198 <.<»i.LK^. ll\i>.M AND IM'l >1KI\L l.\()i Hi ION. 

Now. it is (evident tlinl l"r.'Hii tliis irii>le point of 
vi«'W, I he cnllcct ivist system wonhl he manifestly su- 
perior to tlie present system. Those who shoiiUl ex- 
ercise some other profession llian their art wotihl 
enjoy greater leismv, those wlio now W(n*k for some 
Maecenas, bour^reois or royal, wonkl work like Kem- 
lirandt and Hals of loni^ a^o— for ^M'oups, associations, 
public persons, whose collective luxury would glori- 
ously eclipse the vanity and the pitiful attempts • 
private luxiu*y. And those finally who disdaining; any 
official contact should prefer rather to address them- 
selves directly to the public, would lind it very nnicli 
the easier to live by their l)rush, or their pen, as this 
pu])lic would b(^ infinitely more numerous and more 
enli.u:htened than to-day. 

In vain would be the objection that the great public 
would be a bad judge, that it would prefer brilliant 
mediocrities to really original artists. Does not expe- 
rience show, on the contrary, that th(^ most bitter re- 
sistance to new formulas of art comes, not from the 
masses of the people, but from tlu* privileged classes? 
Walther of Stolzing, rejected by the Meistersingers. 
appeals from theiu to the good people of Nuremberg, 
Corneille, condemned by the Hotel de Rambouillet, 
made Polyeucte triumph on a larger stage. Works 
that are truly great, those which reflect the soul of a 
whole nation, are first understood by the people them- 
S(^lves, or at least by that fraction of the people who 
are not in complete slavery to the j^ower of darkness. 

Much more will this be so when all the units which 
<^(>mp(^s(» the collective whole shall become conscious 
units, wIkmi all i\w members of the htunan family, 
instead of IxMUg divided against themseives, shall 
find on a larger foundation that moral conv<M'gence, 
that fruitful solidarity which reigned in the ancient 
cityund in the medi.Meval community. .Vnd lik(^ those 
t\V(» L:i'«'at ('|)(M-lis Avhich apjx'ar as glorious stages in 



OBJECTIONS. 199 

ilio eternal march of history, socialism will crown its 
social work with the blossoming of a new aesthetics. 

Many a time it has been said that art under all its 
forms is nothing else than the mirror, more or less 
distorted, yet always faithful, of society. To-day it 
reflects the discouragements of a dying bourgeoisie, 
the torments, the anguish, and also the hopes of a 
proletariat which lives and which grows in suffering. 
To-morrow, it will reflect the calm and the peace of 
the happy generations which, escaped from the mire 
of poverty, will have founded, thanks to their own 
effort, the sovereignty of labor and the reign of broth- 
erhood. 

♦ * * 

In one of his most beautiful poems Victor Hugo 
shows us the Satyr of Mount Olympus rising, hairy 
and black, into the proud assembly of the gods. They 
greet him with revilings. He responds with a song 
of defiance. Mercury gives him his flute, Apollo, sub- 
dued, reaches out to him his lyre. The revolutionary 
song rises like an increasing shout to the vault of 
heaven, and the singer in his turn expands, the imr 
mensity of space enters Into this black form; it is 
the entire world which rises and which overthrows 
the throne of Jupiter. 

Is not socialism the Satyr of the Legend of the Cen- 
turies? At first feeble like him, covered with mire 
and hairy, despised when he appears. Later, they 
fear him when he begins to grow. But behold him 
growing still; he seizes the flute of Mercury; he 
grasps Apollo's lyre, he gathers to himself all the 
powers of art, all the arms of science; he rises before 
those who thougnt themselves immortal and soon, 
his foot upon their throne in the fullness of his 
power he, in his turn, will cry to them: 

''All must give way! I am Pan; .Jupiter, sink to 
iir knees!" 



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